Playing the Long Odds
by Bibliotecaria.D
Summary: A.k.a. the Curious Incident of Too Many Prowls. Starscream will never look at Prowl the same, but neither will Smokescreen.
1. Chapter 1

_A.k.a. the Curious Incident of Too Many Prowls. __Starscream will never look at Prowl the same, but neither will Smokescreen. _

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**Title: ** Playing the Long Odds

**Warnings: **Autobots. Awkward. _.

**Rating: ** PG-13

**Continuity: **G1

**Characters: **Autobots, Smokescreen, Prowl

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.

**Motivation (Prompt): **"_." Commission by DisplacedNoble.

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**Part One **

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Humans had a saying: _'There aren't enough hours in the day.'_

Due to Blaster paraphrasing that saying during an officer meeting, the Autobots now had their own version of the old adage: _'There aren't enough Prowls in the fray.'_

"If there were more of me, I would not be dodging the Decepticons' best efforts to take me out," the tactician said in response, unamused by the communication specialist's humor. The rest of the table laughed, but he kept his frown. The literal interpretation was more interesting than a silly idea. "Soundwave has proven too difficult to fool. He inevitably tracks down my location if I am not onsite at the battle itself, and there are two or more Decepticons assigned priority orders to attack me in every battle. Multiples of myself would at least spread the target zone out."

"Wait, are ya really thinking I said that seriously?" Blaster threw his hands up. "Whoa, now. The world couldn't take more of ya, my mech!"

Engine rumbling in subdued amusement, Optimus Prime nodded agreement to both of them. "I can see the benefits. Not only would it distract the strike teams sent after you, but I can only imagine the looks on the Decepticons' faces. Starscream would have a - what does Spike call it?" An inquisitive look went down the table at Ratchet. "Hissycow?"

"Hissyfit, I think. Conniption?"

"Aneurysm."

The medic grunted and folded his arms. "Stress doesn't directly cause that, and regrettably, that's a human-only illness."

"I can change that." A statement promptly followed by everyone at the table turning to Wheeljack as the engineer sat up straight. "Not exactly, of course, but I can create a localized weapon to replicated the pressure and an electric surge to mimic the bursting of a swollen blood vessel in the brain."

"You can engineer a stroke?" Ratchet looked at his friend like he'd grown a second head. "No, revise that statement. **Why** would you **want** to engineer a stroke?"

Wheeljack already had a program open on his datapad, sketching in quick motions of his fingertips. "Quiz time, doc! Initial symptoms include fatigue, confusion, trouble balancing and speaking, and seeing double. What's your treatment plan?"

The whole table drew back into their seats with a dramatic, "Oooo." Engineer versus medic: it was _on_.

Although the drama was subdued at best. Ratchet confined himself to tapping his fingers on his forearm. "Don't call me that. And those symptoms don't fit any known Cybertronian ailment."

"No warning flags went up."

"None. I'd prefer to keep the affected mech under observation, but speculating from post-battle conditions in their repairbay and the Constructicons' excuse for regular treatment plans…"

"Recharge?" One finger went up, ready to chalk a point up for the engineering side of the battle.

Ratchet blew out a deep vent. "Recharge."

The finger scored its point. Wheeljack's audio fins glittered bright white in smug triumph.

Ironhide collected his winnings from Red Alert. Between them, the medic glowered at the overpowered gun being forked over into Ironhide's tender care. Red Alert grumbled something, and there might have been cooing from Ironhide's side. His precious, precious confiscated gun, oh yes, come back to papa's arms.

Ratchet shook his head at the doting and dragged his attention back to Wheeljack. "Assuming you built the symptoms slowly enough, a minor case like that would probably be told to reboot and recharge for at least twelve hours in a cool room. If the balance and sight problems are more irritating than debilitating - "

"Or entertaining," Jazz threw out. He was inching his seat closer to Wheeljack's to sneak a peek at the thingymajig. "Decepticons, remember."

" - right, or entertaining, I'd recommend a full defrag. Secondary treatment plan would be to have the patient report to the medbay for recalibration of gyroscopes and sensory systems if a complete recharge didn't fix things."

Wheeljack hummed acknowledgement. "Giving my device at least twelve to fourteen hours to work its way through cerebral circuitry and implant a trail of microscopic explosives. Nothing magnetic, so it needs to rely on something less sophisticatedin order to evade a quick medical scan."

"Plastic explosive," Red Alert and Ironhide said at the same time.

Suddenly looking a bit trapped in his seat, Ratchet flicked his optics from side to side. Something about the complete confidence in their voices rather alarmed him.

The Security Director and Weapons Specialist didn't notice, both busy giving sage nods. "C-4 wouldn't be picked up by a medical scanner."

"Security scan, certainly, but not a medical one. Despite numerous warnings by me, you still don't include checking for common human sabotage in your treatment plans." Ratchet's optics held contemplation in them as he eyed the finger wagged in his face. Red Alert wisely withdrew it before it got bitten. "Ah. Not that I'm dictating how you should run your medbay. Just giving you some urgently needed advice."

"I'm hoping that 'common' deale-o's just paranoia on your part," Blaster murmured as teeth snapped just a second too late.

Red Alert was busy hiding his hands under his elbows and leaning away from Ratchet's predator's grin, so Ironhide answered the not-quite-a-question. "No harm in bein' prepared. Humans ain't always out for our best interests, and Earth's putty explosives are different than ours. More primitive, but sticky as anything and meant to be set off in smaller amounts than we use most of the time. Quiet bangs, too. Wouldn't hear dabs of it goin' off under a helm. Set it off while a mech's still in recharge, it could get passed off as a bad defrag."

"Noted," Wheeljack said, cheerful in the way only he could be when inventing. His datapad had a working model sketched on the screen. Jazz leaned over his arm to scribble upside down on the blueprint. "And here it is! A miniature crawler device meant to plant explosives on vital cerebral circuitry, implanted in the subject via a," he squinted at Jazz's notes, "'friendly hug by Yours Truly.'"

"A hug?" Optimus Prime asked his Head of SpecOps. "I wasn't aware you and Starscream were on such good terms."

"Are you kidding? Me and Screamer haven't shouted at each other in **ages**. We gotta lot to catch up on." Jazz leaned back in his seat and spread his arms, smirking lazily. "All I need's a good distraction to pop on over and get reacquainted."

"That is where I come in, I take it." Skeptical or not, Prowl had the defensive strategies they'd been discussing up on his screen, and he'd multiplied his icon. The possibility of taking out the Decepticon Air Commander via sabotage was worth the potential absurdity. "You have yet to answer how I will clone myself."

The officers glanced at each other, questioning, but their Prime came to the rescue. His chair creaked as he sat back, optics thoughtful. "It only has to be a distraction."

"The longer the better. The more stressed Starscream is during the battle, the more likely it is he'll consider his symptoms stress-related instead of external." Wheeljack was beginning to flesh out his sketch, a fascinated blue visor peered over fingers clamped onto his arm. Doors quivered behind the excited saboteur as Jazz watched chaos in the making. Wheeljack always spawned better drama than '_As The Kitchen Sinks,'_ although nobody had gotten pregnant. Yet, anyway.

"Also the more likely he'll torque Megatron off and think a backhand's just rattled him," Jazz added. "I'll add goading him to my To-Do list. Get him mad enough to pick a fight, he'll end up demoted to the bottom of the Constructicons' repair queue. I prick him right, he might be too proud to report he's feelin' funny 'cause he doesn't wanna look weak."

Ironhide left Jazz to his scheming and focused on the hidden delinquent mastermind in their midst. Most of the Autobots onboard the _Ark_ didn't know their Prime had once engaged in prank wars, and they would remain in ignorance. The mech had minions to do his mischief for him, now. "What're ya thinking, Prime?"

Optimus Prime steepled his fingers in his best imitation of a thoughtful, wise leader pose. He fooled no one. "I'm thinking that if I mistake Bluestreak for Prowl one more time, I'm going to repaint one of you bright orange."

They all took a moment to picture that. Right, Earth vehicles. Time constraints and frame requirements had limited everyone's selection when they'd awoken on Earth, and only some of the Autobots had ever bothered to search out more variety. There were three Autobots on Earth who had picked the same altmode to match their distinctive Praxian frametype. None of them had changed despite the mix-ups their appearance sometimes caused.

From a distance, they were easily mistaken for each other. Up close? Not a chance. The colors were a dead giveaway. Besides which, if Bluestreak wasn't chattering, it'd be Smokescreen's easy smile or Prowl's stiff formality that made them easy to tell apart. They were nothing alike in personality.

But the Decepticons wouldn't notice, at least not at first. Not if they had the same paintjob.

"It would be effective camouflage," Prowl said. His optics stared into the middle distance as he turned the idea over in his mind.

"Smokes and Blue don't gotta ape you to confuse ol' Soundwave," Blaster said, grinning. "You guys just have to act like each other. Keep switching who's who, and it'll take at least ten minutes to sort out which of you is the real deal. Twenty, if you keep moving around. That'll spread out the 'Con's strike teams and give Screamer something to shriek about."

Prowl blinked his optics back into focus to give him a mild look. "I was referring to the benefits of an orange paintjob within the ship."

There was a beat of silence.

Red Alert twitched. Blaster fizzled a dead mech's static laugh right as Jazz recoiled so hard he fell off his seat. A distraught wail of, "We'd never see him coming!" came from the floor. Ratchet had both hands on the table and one foot on the edge of his chair, ready to scramble over the back, and Ironhide had flung one arm in front of the medic in an instinctive protective gesture.

Objectively speaking, Prowl blending into any wall of the _Ark_ he stopped in front of shouldn't have sent a thrill of horror through them. Realistically, however, that meant Prowl could lurk anywhere and see anything.

One corner of the tactician's mouth quirked up, but Prowl merely inclined his head. "Precisely."

At the head of the table, Optimus Prime rubbed his chin and didn't react to Red Alert huffing and furiously typing notes into a datapad beside him. "I don't think I thought all the ramifications of the orange idea through. Hmm." He shrugged. "Yes, well, it's an idea for another day. For now, let's concentrate on matching Smokescreen and Bluestreak to you." A high-performance engine snarled, but the Prime patted Red Alert's shoulder. Somewhat gingerly, as the mech resembled a nuke waiting to go off. "Three Prowls on the ship will keep the troublemakers in line for a while, don't you agree?"

Fingers froze mid-word. The look on Red Alert's face made Jazz groan in dismay, and Ratchet squawked as Ironhide hauled his chair away from the table. They were joking, but there were evil plans afoot. Yes, such plans, indeed.

Optic alight, the Security Director actually rubbed his hands together and cackled a long, sinister, "Yesssssss." The typing resumed at a much higher speed.

Optimus Prime heaved a sigh. "What have I done?" Blaster and Jazz both raised their hands, ready to answer. "That was a rhetorical question."

What he'd done was start a whisper campaign. Making a formal announcement of a covert operation would be foolishness, so that unleashed the power of gossip upon the _Ark_. Perhaps as a testimony of how much power it had, by the end of the third shift, everyone knew what was going on without having been officially told. They knew without knowing, and therefore the risk of intercepted information plummeted, because there was nothing to be intercepted. Just whispers about what was obviously fact.

"According to scuttlebutt," Smokescreen said when he reported to the Prime's office the next day, "I don't exist and never did. Neither does Bluestreak."

Optimus Prime chuckled and spread his hands. "Ever heard about the mech who wasn't there?"

"Since I'm apparently him, you'd think I would have. But no. Who's the mech who wasn't there?"

"It's a poem by a human, but I think it applies. 'Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today, I wish, I wish he'd go away...'"

While the Prime settled behind the desk to recite the poem, Smokescreen took his usual seat, dragging one of the chairs in front of the desk over to set beside it where they could talk as equals instead of as commander to lowly soldier. These private meetings were nothing new, and he knew his role, here.

The Matrix-Bearer had never been intended to be a military leader. A civilian leader was considered the first among equals. Even as a leader, Optimus Prime could have shed his rank to walk the streets of Cybertron if he'd wished. It was that equality and closeness to the people that he lacked as a military commander. His officers couldn't give him that, but Smokescreen could. He could walk among the Autobots _for_ his leader and report to him as a friend. It was all unofficially official, of course, but the gambler had a poker face that could fool Jazz. He used it to play equal to his Prime during these meetings, because the mech behind the Matrix needed a friend who wasn't trapped in the military structure.

For all his flaws, the gambler possessed an easy camaraderie that allowed him to be his commanding officer's friend when the situation called for it. It did, more often than anyone else would ever know, but his friendly nature also gave him access to the rest of the Autobot ranks. The officers couldn't get that floor-level access, not once they were promoted. No matter how nice an officer, he was still an officer. Mechs knew to be wary of having opinions around officers.

Having an opinion around Smokescreen? The mech was a soldier, one of the ranks just like them. He was their buddy.

A buddy who happened to be the Prime's buddy, too, which meant that word funneled directly to the top through him. It eventually reached Optimus Prime's audios by different sources, but distorted and censored by passage through the officers. Regular check-ups on the Autobots' morale and current gossip in the form of Smokescreen kept the Prime up to date via an uninterrupted pipeline of information.

It wasn't common knowledge, of course. The chain of command went up to the Prime, but Autobots didn't just report straight to him. That's not how a chain of command _worked_. Therefore, Smokescreen existed outside the chain. Technically, on file and officially, he was a soldier in the normal ranks. Unofficially, off the record, he was under the Prime's command and only the Prime's.

He had to be. If he had to report half of the opinions he gathered to any other officer, he'd be tempted to edit in case a sudden bout of 'shoot the messenger' popped up. The information he turned up had to be secure and true, sometimes brutally so, and the only guarantee of that was to ensure the officers couldn't touch him.

Not that the Autobot officers didn't try to squeeze him occasionally. Sometimes, what Smokescreen found out didn't flatter in the slightest. There weren't a lot of officers who knew about his unofficial position under the Prime, but he knew every single one of them because, at one point or another, they'd all sidled over to maybe, sort of, kind of hint that the Prime didn't _really_ need to hear about that thing. That…that thing. The thing that didn't need to be spoken of.

Smokescreen was extraordinarily glad he was under the Prime's command, because the couple time it'd been Jazz or Ratchet dropping delicate hints about not passing on information, he'd hidden behind that rank. They couldn't make his life a living Pit without bringing their leader down on them, and thank Primus for that.

Admittedly, it might have given him a somewhat casual attitude toward authority. He tried not to rely on it, but when the cards were wrong, luck needed an extra boost. There were a couple officers out there who resented him because of that. He really felt like an idiot when he pulled that trick, because it never paid to dismiss authority figures. That, and he inevitably ended up reporting his own lack of respect to Optimus Prime. Combining friend and commanding officer required a careful touch and complete honesty, even at the cost of disappointing said friend and officer.

Yeah, Smokescreen didn't like doing that. Imagining facing the Prime kept his attitude in check, for the most part.

This might be the straw that broke his tenuous respect for officer authority, however. "You want us to disappear?" Hooking his elbows over the back of his chair, he crossed his legs and gave Optimus a doubtful look. "Bluestreak's not very good at stealth. You can get everyone to act like we're not there, but he'll give us away."

"Not quite. The poem's referring to a dead man's ghost, someone who's there but can't be proven to be. We don't want you and Bluestreak to disappear." A quick grab laid three datapads out in a row on the desk in front of them. "We want you to be Prowl, to make the Decepticons see a mech who wasn't there. When he's there," Optimus tapped his forefinger on the middle datapad, "they won't see him for you." He set his hands on the outside pair. "When you're there, they won't be able to tell that he's not. We want nobody to be able to tell which one you are. They'll either start double-guessing themselves and spread themselves thin targeting all of you, or start focusing their efforts on figuring out who's the real Prowl." His hands mixed the datapads about, rearranging the order. Smokescreen watched with a gambler's appreciative optic for the practiced motion. Little known fact: Optimus could out-fake a faker on shell games. "The idea is that if we paint the three of you to look alike and you do your best to impersonate each other, no one will be able to tell who is really whom."

"You impersonate Bluestreak, who impersonates Prowl, who impersonates you, and switch at random." Datapads shuffled and spun, ending in a neat stack, and blue optics smiled at Smokescreen over them. "'When I came home last night at three, the man was waiting there for me.'" Hands spread, indicating the identical devices. Smokescreen couldn't pick one out of the pile. "'But when I looked around the hall, I couldn't see him there at all!'"

The gambler stared in silence at the stack for a long moment, doors flexing behind the chair as he thought. Finally, he shook his head and gave his friend that easy smile. "So first impression aside, the plan's to make us visible. Really visible. Visible everywhere." He liked how the poem had been interpreted. A mech who seemed to be everywhere but actually wasn't; that was a mech who couldn't be caught. Sure, it made targets of him and Bluestreak, but it would allow the Autobots' best tactical mind to move freely.

He'd put his life on the line in far more dangerous operations. Besides, this way he got to look like Prowl for a week or better. A hundred things to do jumped straight to the forefront of his thoughts.

"Don't abuse this," Ratchet sighed while affixing the fake pieces of plating. They smoothed out the tips of his helm chevron to Prowl's exact measurements. "A reputation is a difficult thing to repair. I suppose it'd be too much to ask that you keep your mouth shut as much as possible?"

"I really don't know if I can do that, I mean, I'm not very good at that," Bluestreak said, assuming it'd been aimed at him. The younger Praxian fidgeted nervously but stilled before Sunstreaker did more than draw back the paint sprayer and glare. Offering an apologetic smile, Bluestreak contented himself by playing with his fingers instead of moving around and screwing up the new paintjob. "I can try, honest! I just think we all know that silence and I aren't on good terms. I don't think this is a great idea. Of course I'll try! But nobody's going to look at me and think 'hey, that's Prowl! Wow, he's talkative today. When did he start talking about TV shows and Earth trivia? Did he learn to smile? I didn't know Prowl could smile. Good for him. He has a sniper rifle! That's new, but no way is that Bluestreak. Surely that's Prowl, because look at the Prowl-like paint. I can't possible doubt that's Prowl.' You know what I mean? It's just not going to work like that."

Across the medbay, Prowl looked up, opened his mouth to comment on the somewhat unflattering stream of words - and closed it again. Sunstreaker snickered and Wheeljack had a minor giggle fit over at his workbench, but Prowl just shook his head. That was Bluestreak, all right. The gunner babbled, and so long as he was babbling, his hands remained rock-steady and his mind could operate inside the cloud of comforting background noise. Everyone else's conscious mind concentrated to produce words while the back of their mind streamed subconscious connections, memories, and thoughts. In a mech like Bluestreak, whose past trauma filled that subconscious stream the second he stopped distracting himself, the best solution had been to let that part take over moving his mouth.

It led to an obnoxious amount of unfiltered chatter, but the mech couldn't stop himself without ending up a shuddering ball of trauma victim. As a side effect, there were worse options than nonstop talking. At least the mech could be counted on to be honest. He'd said what the rest of the room was thinking.

Prowl went back to working where he sat on another repair berth. He had another ten minutes while the welds cooled on his new back structure. Wheeljack had produced a couple of protopulser guns in no time flat to dress his shoulders up like the other two Datsuns, but the weapons required support kibble. Prowl had never installed shoulder weaponry due to his lack of software compatibility with gunmounts. The protopulsers were functional but ran by manual targeting and firing control, all powered by an external power pack.

Once the structure was ready, Wheeljack would settle the gun into place and head over to install supports under Bluestreak's shoulder weapons to match them to Smokescreen's. After Ratchet finished making small aesthetic corrections to their frames, Sunstreaker got his turn. He painted them to look alike. By the time he was done, there were three Prowls sitting around the medbay.

"Creepy," Sunstreaker decided after taking a long look at the group of Prowls. "What do you call a herd of Prowls? An authority? A patrol of Prowls?"

"'Cons won't know what to think," Wheeljack said. He seemed particularly proud of that. Tools clattered as he packed his kit up to haul back to his lab, but he kept instructing Prowl on the use of the new guns as he worked. "The power pack's hidden under your altmode's roof, so remember you're down to two passenger seats, now. You don't want humans anywhere near the power supply or ammo feeds when you fire in altmode, and keep in mind that they're not connected to your powerplant. They're good until their tanks run out or the pack's discharged."

Experimenting with moving the guns up and down on his shoulders, Prowl nodded and made a note of the warning.

Ratchet puffed air out his vents and kicked aside an empty paint can to sit down on a stool. "Any thoughts on how you're going to pass?"

Surprisingly, the question was directed at Bluestreak. Well, surprising if a mech didn't know how the sniper's mind worked. Just because he sounded like a blithering idiot 90% of the time didn't mean his mind couldn't cut, it was so sharp. The mech was a sniper. He had the ability to calculate angles and battlefield positioning in the beat of a fuel pump. His condition just meant he blurted out a lot of meaningless noise in comparison to the rest of the time.

So while he'd been talking at everyone here in the medbay, he'd been thinking. "Yeah! Sort of. I don't think I'll ever make a passable Prowl for the Autobots, but we just have to fool the Decepticons, and now that we got our voice synthesizers synced, even Soundwave can't pick us out by voice, so we just have to talk right and act a bit. I got this idea about how I can stay quiet for a while and maybe be less like me, which is a good thing because maybe they'll figure out me and Smokescreen are part of the authority," Sunstreaker snorted a laugh, "but we can keep them guessing for a while if we're all acting off, and I think that's the point, right?"

It took them a second to realize he'd paused for a response instead of for effect. "Oh. Yes, that is the point." Prowl nodded at his doppelganger. "What is your idea?"

Bluestreak's face lit up. "Open commlines to Blaster! It wouldn't be totally secure but it never is, and during battle we've all got commlines open, so if he's got it encrypted it'll at least take Soundwave some time to crack it, but that shouldn't matter while we're in the base, and it's in the base that we need to start practicing. If we've got a line open to Blaster, he can coordinate with Red Alert about who's where and doing what anyway to keep us from running into each other too frequently and giving away the game to any Decepticon spies, and then **I** can talk to **him**, and it's just something Jazz said once about when I'm talking over internal comm, because you know how hard it is to concentrate on two conversations at once but I should disable my vocalizer, too, just in case, so I really have to stop and think about sounding all Prowl-like before I actually talk - "

"Bluestreak! Rewind that," Ratchet said through the excited babble, rolling his hand like he could physically go back. "What did Jazz say about you talking on your comm?"

No insult taken on Bluestreak's end for the interruption, since he was used to mechs picking stuff out of his river of words. "He said I looked completely different. I was kind of insulted at the time because I thought he was making fun of me, but now I think we can use it, and that's okay. I can show you. Hold on, I'll call Blaster."

The other Autobots in the medbay watched, interested, as the normally bubbly gunner went silent, attention drawing inward. His doors drew up in a subtle tension, a slight closure of habitually open body language as it channeled into whatever conversation he'd started over internal commlink, and his optics dimmed a couple shades into a darker blue. Animated gestures and active facial features dropped to almost nothing as he concentrated on speaking to Blaster. It gave him a somber, thoughtful appearance. One finger tapped where his hands had come to rest on his thighs.

Out of nowhere, there was another Prowl where Bluestreak in a new paintjob had been sitting.

Unnerved, Sunstreaker said, "That's just wrong."

"Except for the posture, the resemblance is uncanny." Wheeljack edged closer to press his hand to Prowl #2's lower back under the altmode roof. Bluestreak sat up straight. Still thoroughly distracted, he gave the engineer a small smile that looked oddly familiar. "There, that's better."

"Fragging Primus, that's even more wrong."

"Hush, you. Good job, Bluestreak. Great idea."

The small smile grew into a wide grin. Combined with Bluestreak's attention mostly elsewhere, it had a relaxed ease to it that made its odd familiarity even more pronounced. Ratchet glanced at Smokescreen, who nodded back. "Looks a bit like me, doesn't he?"

Prowl - the real Prowl - frowned at them both. "I do not understand how you can tell. That looks like my smile." They gave him the same look, and he frowned harder. "Do not say I do not smile. I smile when the circumstances call for it."

"Yeah, once you've analyzed it down to precisely how wide a smile is appropriate for the occasion. It shows. That," Ratchet pointed, "is not your smile."

"It looks good on you," Smokescreen added, letting his amusement show through. Prowl stiffened and gave him a startled look, doors jerking up behind his shoulders, either at the opinion or from seeing his own face smile back at him.

Ratchet nodded. "That it does. We're going to have to work on your ability to imitate these two," he jerked his thumb at Smokescreen and nodded toward Bluestreak. Prowl's frown lightened into a pensive expression, and Ratchet looked at Smokescreen, a.k.a. Prowl #3. "How about you? Got any tricks you can pull?"

Smokescreen shrugged and hopped up to sit on a berth with his hands curled over the edge. Leaning forward, he projected cheerful, eager curiosity as strong as he could. "Y'know, I think I do! It's gonna be harder than I thought to talk forever and an age, but I think I can manage to keep my vocalizer from going up in smoke, and do you think vocalizers do that? By the way, we're going to need to requisition sniper rifles for all of us to pull this off, because you know me and my sniper rifle, you'll never see me far from it. In fact, has anyone considered meeting in the shooting range to talk while doing target practice? I need to sharpen my sharp-shooting, but since I'm Prowl, then I need some datapads to bury my nose in all the slagging time, so somebody get me the codes to Prow - **my** office so I can do desk work. Throw me some easy files to mess around with, and I think we'll be set."

He stopped kicking his heels and sat up straight, lowering his doors and lifting his chin to meet Ratchet's optics evenly. "I am sure more than crossword puzzles can be arranged to keep me occupied."

A thin whine of air sucking in against vent fans came from Sunstreaker's direction. Everyone looked at him. The golden frontliner had his painting kit held to his chest like an elderly woman clutching her pearls, and he stared at the authority of Prowls in front of him as if they were the Unmaker unchained. "Gahhhhh."

"…I think that'll do." Ratchet patted one of the Prowls on the shoulder. It was difficult to tell which at that moment. "That'll do just fine."

It did. While Bluestreak's imitation of Smokescreen worked better than his attempt at being Prowl-like, Smokescreen could pull off a credible Prowl act to fill in the gaps. Prowl required a lot of coaching in how to loosen up enough to pass as either of them, but it was working! The authority of Prowls swept through the _Ark_ like a disciplinary super force, practicing their acts and coordinating with Blaster, all while confounding their fellow Autobots.

The adjustment period for having three Prowls out and about was short and somewhat brutal, as law and order descended on three different locations at once with the office of Autobot Second-in-Command backing them. The Aerialbots ended up with six citations for disorderly conduct on their records. Sideswipe took to sitting in his quarters any time he was off-duty after the day three Prowls caught him speeding, one right after another. That was enough to freak out a regular mech, much less a troublemaker like him. _Jazz_ got two citations. Ratchet weaseled out of his by blaming Ironhide, who just shrugged and took the black tick on his record.

The only reason there wasn't a betting pool on guessing who was whom was because Bluestreak and Smokescreen? Who were they? Nope, just Prowls here. The Prowls were acting like Prowls, so no guessing needed.

The trio of Datsuns werebusy getting their imitations down pat. Hopefully, by the time the Decepticons pulled their next stunt, the Autobots' flawless innocent act would confuse the circuits off them. Starscream was going to hate the next battle, even before Jazz tagged him with Wheeljack's device.

Meanwhile, an authority of Prowls caused the exact opposite of chaos wherever they went. Everything was going exactly as planned.

With the exception of one small incident.

"Prowl #2's been insisting Prowl #1 keeps staring at him," Jazz announced at the next general officer meeting. Nothing terribly important would be covered this week, so Prowl #3 was playing the part of the original today. Anything to throw off Decepticon spies a little more.

Smokescreen gave Jazz his best disinterested look. "How is this significant?"

"Weeeeell," the saboteur drew out, "#2's sayin' he won't leave the office until #1 cuts it out with the funny looks, and #1's insisting he did no such thing, so now they're wagin' a passive-aggressive war over who gets the office."

"Fighting over getting to lock himself away to do filework." Ratchet ran a hand down his face. "Only Prowl would do that. Only Prowl."

"What kind of 'funny looks' is…other Prowl accusing Prowl of?" Optimus Prime asked.

For the first time, Jazz's amusement took a dent. "Uh…" The officers gave him expectant looks, and he shifted from side to side in his chair. "Here's the thing. Prowl 2.0 showed me the look, and I get that he's exaggeratin', but it is kinda weird. Lemme just be Prowl a minute." He sat up straight and picked up a datapad to play the part of Prowl. He glanced across the table and nodded to Ratchet. "You're Prowl the Second. Pretend to be working on something." The medic gave him a cynical look but picked up a datapad of his own. "And here's the look."

The most lovey-dovey, sappy, utterly smitten expression pasted itself over Jazz's features as he gazed at Ratchet. His visor stared, unwavering limpid blue.

Ratchet looked up, and Jazz ducked his head, face going blank. The second Ratchet went back to pretending to work, he fixated again. The corner of Ratchet's mouth pulled down the third time he caught Jazz staring. Mild interest became uneasiness the longer Jazz kept it up, and the rest of the table reset their optics when the medic finally set the datapad down with a loud _click_.

"Yeah, that's strange." Ratchet cleared his throat and gave their current member of the Prowl clan a strange look of his own. "Have you noticed anything like that?"

"No. I would think I would recognize such a look if I saw it." And now he was tempted to try it himself the next time he had anything to use as a mirror. He couldn't imagine Prowl, of all mechs, giving Bluestreak that look. A lovesick lover pining for his darling would be less obvious.

Blaster clapped his hands when the silence drew out too long. "Right! Okay, if **you** haven't seen it," he pointed with both forefingers, "and don't have a problem with it, then I'll just steer our talkative Prowler in another direction when his more stoic brethren's incoming. Ladies and gentlemechs," he boomed in his best announcer voice, and Red Alert facepalmed beside him, "this week's Running of the Prowls will be directed by moi and a lucky volunteer from the crowd. Now don't all of you volunteer at once - yes, the lucky contestant down in front!" Jazz stopped wildly waving his hand and gave Ironhide and Optimus Prime a triumphant smirk. "Thank you, and remember that management is not responsible for any trampling that may occur." Jazz's head whipped around, surprise in his visor. Blaster winked at him. "I hear some of them get feisty."

Ironhide and Optimus Prime gave their suddenly dismayed fellow officer identical smug looks. Thought he'd won, had he? Ha!

Blaster grinned wider. "Ándaleándale, arriba arriba!"

Smokescreen didn't waggle his optic ridges like he would if he'd been wearing his own paintjob, but he let one pop upward. He added it to his best deadpan Prowl expression. "I am not Speedy Gonzales."

However, he _was_ curious. He had never, ever thought about - much less seen - Prowl giving anyone that kind of look. Granted, it was a look as translated via Bluestreak's expressive face and presented by Jazz, who had probably exaggerated even further for comedic effect, but still. What a weird look.

So Smokescreen started watching for it. And watching for it. And not seeing it. What was he missing?

"Frag," Ironhide muttered to him when they sat together in the common room. The old red mech had stolen a look over his door and evidently caught Prowl (original flavor) at it. "How come I ain't seen that before?"

"What?" Smokescreen didn't spin around, but he did turn to exchange cordial nods with, uh, himself. Prowl looked the same as always, which was to say, reserved and stiffly formal. Seriously, why couldn't he see what everyone else had started commenting on? Ratchet had confirmed it. Wheeljack had backed him up as of yesterday, and Jazz had just started looking thoughtful out of nowhere. Now Ironhide had seen it, too, and this was getting just plain ridiculous.

Smokescreen studied Prowl and frowned to himself. An extra brightness boosted the stoic mech's optics to Bluestreak's level, and he was carrying a rifle scope as if he'd been checking it for errors, but it was a thin act. Smokescreen knew he was the real Prowl without Blaster's ping through the open commline. There was something extremely _Prowl_ about him.

A shock ran through his engine as it hit him that he knew that. It was easy to pick out Prowl #3 because Bluestreak acted wrong. Wrong, as in not according to what Smokescreen expected from the mech they were imitating. He'd had a long, long time to adjust to how everyone looked and acted around him. It was background social knowledge built up vorn by vorn. The accumulated knowledge was filed away in his mind to be used when mingling in the common room or passing in the halls.

What sputtered his engine was realizing that he knew how Prowl acted around him. He could pinpoint when Bluestreak got the act right, just like he could tell how bad Prowl's Bluestreak façade failed. There was something _Prowl_ he recognized as right.

The shock struck him because it had never occurred to him to analyze what Prowl actually did. He'd been comparing everything to that baseline without looking at what the baseline was. Everything had been there all along. He'd never brought it out to analyze.

He knew exactly how Prowl looked at him. Looked at him, acted around him, stopped at his table and spoke with him whenever the tactician came in when he was there. Which he usually did, if only to collect his energon ration or lecture whoever had caused trouble last. That was unusual, wasn't it? That Smokescreen saw the workaholic Second-in-Command so often? Or was it merely coincidence upon coincidence?

Now that he was thinking about it, Prowl's behavior around him set off shrill alarms in the back of his head. Oh. The baseline that'd built up over the course of the war had gradually become something that he'd never compared to anyone else's behavior. Because…because it was Prowl, basically. Prowl got special exemptions for a lot of strange behavioral ticks. It came from his rank, from that battle computer all his thoughts cycled through, and even from Smokescreen's own position outside of Prowl's chain of command. Wild cards could be assets or nightmares for tacticians, but either way, they bore close watch.

_How_ Prowl watched him hadn't, until this very moment, struck Smokescreen as odd.

An uneasy tide rose in his chest as his self-not-self across the common room noticed both he and Ironhide looking at him. Prowl's optics flickered, and the tactician slowed. A brief hesitation, and then his path veered off toward Jazz's table.

Whoa, now Smokescreen _knew_ there was something up. Jazz's table was the gathering place of Special Operations and its game of Monopoly.

SpecOps played to win, and they played dirty. The current edition of the boardgame had been running for half a year, even under the revised rules laid down by Optimus Prime in an attempt to cut off the corruption and trickery. The rules hadn't worked, possibly because of suspected bribery of the Prime by a certain former noblemech. The game had spawned politics, blackmail, covert operations to steal tiny plastic hotels, a wholly sadistic new deck of cards, and forgery of fake paper money. There was an entire government in place behind the taxes, jail, and railroads. The politicians running it were the winners from the last game.

The tangled web of economics and politics evolved in that game required a lawyer to navigate. Only possession of property or money moved a mech up in the political system. A stronger economic status equaled political power.

"This is why you won't be in charge of designing Cybertron's new government, I'll have you know," Bumblebee had told Mirage more than once, usually while the blue spy was raking in fake money by the handful.

"Says the Railroad Tycoon."

"Bow before the Astroforce!"

Normally, Prowl avoided the SpecOp's unofficial table like Cosmic Rust anytime the game was out. They kept trying to recruit him. Mirage claimed there was a proviso in the rules that drafted the Datsun to his team, but Jazz swore he'd get the Prime in his corner if Prowl joined.

Hence the reason for Prowl's decision to stay away. The last thing anyone needed was tabletop warfare between the officers.

Yet there he went. Jazz's visor widened, and his elbow slid down the table as he tipped over to see around Prowl's doors. Baffled blue glass asked a silent question. Smokescreen and Ironhide shrugged back, as confused as he was. The tactician causing their consternation glued on an unconvincing Bluestreak-style smile and opened his mouth to start a stilted attempt at the chatter.

The Decepticons timed their attack perfectly. "Alert! Alert! Autobots, assemble!" blared through the _Ark_'s P.A. system. "Decepticons spotted in Idaho!"

The room groaned in unison. Prowl, however, seemed to offer a quick thanks to Primus as his mouth snapped shut. That garnered curious looks from the SpecOps mechs as they shut down the game for next time. They'd already been interested in what was going on, but his obvious relief tipped the balance; now they just _had_ to know. The Datsun turned and hurriedly strode from the room, and gleeful grins chased at his heels.

Ooo, a mystery. Agents loved mysteries. It meant good gossip. Flee, Prowl, flee. Their nosiness would not be so easily escaped.

In the meantime, the other Autobots grumbled toward battle-ready. "What's in Idaho that the Decepticons could want?"

"Maybe Megatron built a potato gun."

Autobots paused halfway out of their seats to picture that.

"…anyone wanna bet on it?"

"You're on."

Smokescreen held his doors out straight in his best authoritative posture as he got up and headed out a step ahead of Ironhide. The other Autobots deferred to his familiar shape on reflex, which at least reminded him that now was not the time to be worrying about Prowl. That could wait. His questions could wait. Tomorrow would come soon enough.

It was time for the plan to go into effect. Here and now, Smokescreen was Prowl the Third and nobody else. Everyone would treat him like Prowl, because Smokescreen didn't exist. Three Prowls on the battlefield, three Prowls giving orders - as relayed from Prowl #1 by Blaster - and three Prowls with sniper rifles. The confusion should wreck merry havoc among the Decepticons even before Jazz went over to chat with their Air Commander.

Starscream was about to have a very bad day.

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**_[ A/N:_**_Thank you for your patience, Displacednoble!__**]**_


	2. Pt 2

**Title: ** Playing the Long Odds

**Warnings: **Autobots. Awkward. _.

**Rating: ** PG-13

**Continuity: **G1

**Characters: **Autobots, Smokescreen, Prowl

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.

**Motivation (Prompt): **"_." Commission by DisplacedNoble.

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**Part Two**

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Optimus Prime could be the epitome of tact. He was a diplomat to the core, even after millions of years of war. He could calm traumatized civilians, mediate between arguing soldiers, and gracefully broach sensitive topics.

As a friend, he kind of tanked at handling touchy subjects. "Are you avoiding Prowl?"

Metal banged as Smokescreen bounced his forehelm off the desk. "Optimus!"

The warning tone made the Prime wince, but the hint of distressed whine made him ignore it. He leaned in to try and look the smaller mech in the face. Smokescreen brought his arms up to hide in. "You are, aren't you? I've been fending off Red Alert over it for two weeks. He's convinced your change in behavior means we've been infiltrated and you just haven't found enough evidence to implicate whatever officer's been compromised."

Something that had happened in the past. Smokescreen's audio to the ground picked up rumors in the ranks before they hit Red Alert's radar. Soldiers saw a lot more than they reported to their superiors, but gossip flew. Security watched the gambler in an attempt to take advantage of Smokescreen's unique noncommissioned position, but he didn't report to Red Alert. That drove the Security Director a little crazy.

"No traitors," came from behind a defensive wall of arms. Even muffled, Smokescreen sounded miserable.

A tentative finger tapped the back of his head. "So you're just avoiding Prowl." The real Prowl, as the other two Datsuns were back to their regular colors. Starscream would have nightmares in black and white if he ever woke from his coma. That was neither here nor now, however, as this particular Datsun was back in blue, red, and grey. The yellow chevron stood out from the bold colors, and Optimus Prime caught it in a light pinch the moment the tip emerged from Fortress Arms. "Come on out, Smokescreen. Talk to me. Are you avoiding him for a reason, or..?"

The tugging got his optics into view, but that's where progress halted. Smokescreen burrowed the rest of his face in his arms and peered up from their shelter, woebegone and pitiful. "He gives me these **looks**, Optimus. Like, I get what Bluestreak was going on about, because now I can't unsee it, and he's **always doing it**. He stops when I catch him, but the second I turn away, it's back. I think..." He sank down a bit lower, optics pale blue and a little lost as he stared at the desk. Maybe if he stared long enough, it'd cough up a solution. "I think he likes me."

The other mech made a thoughtful noise, a hum, and Smokescreen's optics shot to him with a desperate intensity. "You don't understand! It's Prowl! Prowl's not even my slagging **friend**, hasn't ever even sat down to have a conversation with me that's not professional - well, not quite," he amended, but freed one hand to wave a dismissal of it. "He talks to me a lot, like **a lot**, but it's always the same blasted small talk every single time he passes me in the common room. Polite variations on 'how are you?' and some backhanded warning about my gambling, uh, problem couched in asking if I won my last hand. Wash, wax, and repeat until I can talk to him on autopilot, and what the frag? What the frag is that? At what point did I get so used to him finding me when I'm off-duty?"

The waving hand had come to rest against the side of his helm, fingers digging into the metal hard enough to leave scuff marks in the paint. Smokescreen's other hand had opened upward, rolling at the wrist over and over again in quick, frantic motions in time with his words like it would somehow illustrate just how alarming he found all this.

Optimus Prime just gave another vague, "Mm-hmm." He folded his hands together on the desk and listened to the smaller Autobot talk.

Talk faster yet as the words finally poured out after being pent up for two weeks of fermenting under pressure. "This is burning my rubber! I can't turn a corner without thinking he'll be there giving me that fragging look, but half the time I don't even react right away because I'm so used to the rusted glitch being **around** me all the time. He's - he's - " Fingers dragging down the side of his face, Smokescreen's expression flashed through half a dozen emotions, anxiety underlying the whole collection. "He's a variable in half my social projections! He's been a passing presence in every common room I've habitually frequented since you and I started meeting, so pretty much since - oh, fragging Pit, it's been since Tactical kicked me out for my," His voice fell, because admitted to a flaw didn't mean he liked to talk about it, "addiction. How did that **happen** without me picking up on it?! He's always there, he's always staring at me, and I swear everyone's so used to it he could have kept gradually getting closer until in a thousand years nobody would notice he's sitting **in my lap**."

The Prime chuckled. "I think you're underestimating the rest of us."

Smokescreen's left optic ticked. "The rest of you? Who cares about the rest of you? He's not inching his way into **your** everyday lives! I don't get it! He didn't just walk over one day and say hello, oh no. He - he had to have planned this. He had to have." He pushed the heels of his hands into the base of his chevron and revved his engine. The stressed roar said better than words how strained and unhappy the situation made him.

Teasing out the threads of Prowl's bizarre infiltration had ramped that unhappiness up memory by memory. It really hadn't been anything as straightforward as a friendship. He knew who his friends were. No, this was turning around to find there had been a subtle invasion right under his nose. He'd opened his optics two weeks ago to discover the other Praxian everywhere around him. Prowl had made himself at home inside his _life_, giving him a look full of things he couldn't bear to think about.

First with just entering the room he took his ration in. Once, twice, a few times here and there. Different paths through the room, stopping to talk with other mechs, but always straying closer and closer until that day Prowl stopped to talk to _him_. One time here, another day and a nodded greeting, but the next time he was off-duty, Prowl had asked him a polite question in passing, optics sharp on the cards in Smokescreen's hands. At the time, the gambler had shrugged off the look as wariness that he'd relapsed into his addiction again, but looking back at it, he could see the intensity taking root in Prowl's gaze. It had grown, slow and working across the surface of the tactician's face over the years, worming deep into the changing shade of blue indicating emotion. Small talk here, standing behind him during a game there. Encountering him the halls more often than not. Listing him an auxiliary aide in Tactical despite refusing to promote him back to the division.

His ability to calculate social interactions wasn't an external computer processor. He couldn't reach into his own mind and shut it off. It was part of how he thought. So when it took a million threads of memory and spun them into a complete picture, Smokescreen couldn't block it out.

Which didn't stop him from promptly hiding his head under his arms again, desperately hoping he could unsee what he'd been blissfully blind to all this time. "I think he likes me, Optimus," he whimpered into the desk, repetition not making the complete overhaul in his social algorithms any easier to understand. Prowl, liking him. Prowl. _Prowl_. Primus have mercy. "Just…it's too much, okay? I can't handle facing him, knowing he's been in lo - liking me for, uh, for a long time." This was blowing his mind, and he'd been trying to deal with it on his own.

That hadn't been working out very well for him.

A large hand settled over the back of his helm, warm and oddly soothing. Optimus Prime was here. Things would turn out okay. "You have been somewhat oblivious," that calm voice said kindly.

If thoughts were cars, there would have been a cacophony of shrieking brakes and blaring horns as everything came to a screeching halt in Smokescreen's head. His doors had been dipped low, but they stiffened behind him. Traffic resumed in a stuttering stop-and-go that had a tight sort of tension simmering under it.

He looked up slowly, astonished. "You…knew?" The Prime blinked, kindness backpedaling rapidly into puzzlement. That slid straight through into realization as Smokescreen's optics widened. "You knew?"

"Ah, well." That comforting hand withdrew carefully, and Optimus Prime shifted in his chair like it had suddenly grown uncomfortable. "I…yes. I suspected."

The Autobot sitting beside the desk pushed back, doors hiking up above the back of his chair as he sat ramrod stiff. His optics had reached the limits of their frames, and his mouth had fallen open slightly as he sucked in a huge, long breath. "You knew?!" shrilled against the rush of air, fighting to get out, but Smokescreen's chest heaved with the shock-rattle of fans catching violently, slashing ventilation cycles into a shaken reaction that struck the Prime in the vulnerable kernel of self he'd kept alive through meetings just like this one.

"You **knew**!" shouted the sole mech he could allow himself as a friend, no rank or office in the way, and Optimus Prime had no idea what to say. "You knew, and you didn't **tell** me? Why? Why?! Did Prowl tell you not to tell me? Was there a conflict of interest?" Smokescreen's hands twitched, jerking in aimless half-gestures as he clawed for an excuse that wasn't there. "Was it confidential? I - did you just notice?" He relaxed abruptly, doors and arms going slack as he grasped at that. "Oh. Oh, okay, you saw it, too. Everybody's been commenting on it since Bluestreak said something about it." He scowled. "Did you know there's a betting pool?"

Optimus Prime looked down and laced his fingers together, less of a listening pose and more to keep his composure. Softly, as if it would be gentler said at low volume, he said, "No. No, this - I first saw it a very long time ago. Prowl never said anything. I simply noticed how he started looking at you. I believe he has grown fond of you, but I - forgive me, Smokescreen. I didn't think if my place to say anything. I - "

"You knew and you didn't tell me." Wide optics narrowed. Shock became betrayal. Smokescreen shoved his chair back, hands creaking on the edge of the desk as he struggled for control. "You knew."

Usually when events skewed off like this, it was in the middle of a firefight. Something had gone wrong, and Optimus Prime didn't know how to fix it. Sudden ambush, hostiles closing in, and there were Autobots down at his feet because he hadn't been leader enough to get them out unscathed. "Yes, I knew," he admitted in a small voice, hoping confessing would somehow help. "But he's never said anything. I didn't want to upset him by giving away hi - "

"I thought you were my friend!"

The chair clattered to the floor, and silence followed the strained yell.

Smokescreen stood, fists clenched at his sides, and shook his head. Over and over, he shook his head, but the room didn't stop reeling around him when he stopped. The one blasted friendship pre-negotiated to be completely honest, the one mech he'd trusted to uphold an agreement like that, and Optimus Prime had withheld information from him. From him, a mech who relied on knowing the social network to navigate the Autobot ranks and gather accurate information.

Unofficially, they'd mapped out the Autobots from the inside out together. The Prime had brought every one of his officer relationships to the table to discuss with Smokescreen, seeking his counsel and judgment on how reliable his closest officers were. They'd discussed Prowl a dozen times. No, a hundred times. The rank and file Autobots had difficulty understanding Prowl's cold approach to tactics, and Optimus had frequently asked Smokescreen's help in how deep that difficulty ran, how to counter it, and how to mediate between battle plans and individual lives.

A deliberate, glaring blindspot had been created. It was a lie by omission. The information might not have had an impact on their professional discussions, but dear holy highway markers, how in Primus' name could Optimus have withheld this from him as a friend?

Smokescreen's jaw worked a moment. He opened his mouth, rethought, and closed it again. His optics turned off, and he twisted his face away to hide it from the mech sitting stock still behind the desk. Optimus Prime seemed to have shrunken into himself despite not moving.

When the gambler spoke, his voice stayed dead calm. "One day, you find out that Ironhide's been chasing your aft since the day the Matrix chose you. Not before then, but only after then, and not openly. You're not sure why or when, really, but that's your best guess. You don't **know** that he wants you, Pit, you don't know how he wants you. You don't know anything for certain, because he's never said a word, never made a move, never communicated outside of your respective ranks. He just worked his way into every single aspect of your life until suddenly he's everywhere around you, and people are taking bets on the two of you do, because guess what? They found out the same time you did. He's been looking at you like a starving mech looks at energon. You blink and find out this rock-solid background person whose personality you thought you knew, who you thought of as a neutral, stable support that can be relied upon to always be the one professional mech at any time, any place - yeah, him? That's built into your life, and only now are you seeing that he's got ulterior motives, getting this close. He isn't neutral, and he's not anything that you thought him to be for millions of years."

Doors shrugged. "He hasn't done anything wrong, I suppose. But it yanks the floor out from under you, finding out there's a door where there'd been a wall."

"And then," Smokescreen's head swung around, optics coming online to pin the Prime in twin blue spotlights of accusation and hurt, "I tell you, my friend, that - huh, yeah. Ironhide? I knew about that. You're kind of slow, in fact. Mech, I saw what he was doing ages ago. I just didn't tell you about it."

He dimmed his optics and shook his head, a grimace turning his mouth down in an expression almost like grief. "How would **you** feel, Optimus?"

This time, the Prime was the one who looked away.

"I…" Still shaking his head, Smokescreen took a step back. "I need to go for a drive." He turned and hurriedly strode for the door.

A quiet apology followed him.

He wrestled down the urge to drop into his altmode and race away, leaving raw emotions behind to be dealt with later. Instead, he paused on the threshold and forced a full ventilation cycle. Calm felt far away, inaccessible, but he could fake it. He was Smokescreen. If he couldn't fake a friendly smile at his worst enemy, what kind of gambler was he?

Maybe it hurt so much because he shouldn't have to fake it.

He knew the rigid angle of his doors gave him away, but he tried, for the sake of his leader if not his friend. "I know," Smokescreen said. His throat ached from how hard he choked his vocalizer down to a conversational level. Yelling wouldn't help the situation any. Staring out into the hall, he swallowed hard and reminded himself that this was no one's fault. Not really. "You're sorry, but I'm not ready to forgive you." He hesitated a bare second. "Not yet."

Only once he stepped forward and the door closed behind him did he transform. Technically, there were regulations against shipboard transformation, but most of those had been written out of the rules. Loss of artificial gravity had ceased to be a potential problem due to the crash on Earth. Now there were speed limits and stop signs at busy corners, although most of the Autobots stayed out of altmode from habit.

Smokescreen ignored speed limits and stop signs alike. Anything that would have slowed him down didn't matter. All that mattered was reaching the outer doors and freedom. He'd probably be in trouble with Red Alert when he got back, but he didn't care. He couldn't care. He hit the road accelerating fast enough to knock thought off its wheels, and that's how he wanted it to stay.

He headed for the dirt track far off the highways. As much as he craved the freedom of an open road, right now he needed speed. However, his urge to gamble wasn't so out of control that he'd bet against the Oregon Highway Patrol. Those cops had figured out early on that they had a goldmine in speeding tickets sitting in the _Ark_. As a result, there wasn't a human-made road anywhere near the mountain that didn't have a Patrol car staking it out. If Sideswipe couldn't get past them, Smokescreen certainly wouldn't.

Fortunately, driving was the accepted method of burning off restless energy among the Autobots. Demand had created supply. With official blessing on the project, Wheeljack had drafted a squad one day to level out and tamp down a winding course out in the wilderness. At the expense of a few trees, he'd managed to set up something with long straight stretches for speed and enough looping curves to challenge speedsters.

Smokescreen fishtailed out onto the track and floored it. Worries disappeared, tension unwound, and his tires threw up dust clouds. The nervous anxiety spitting static in the back of his mind finally fell silent. Euphoria filled the empty space: the high of a vehicle altmode let loose to reach its maximum speed. His processors whirred into dealing with the road ahead and nothing else.

Primus, it felt good.

He'd just needed to…let go. To toss everything out a window for a minute. He could come back later and pick up the pieces, maybe see how they fit together after he cleared his head. It'd give him a fresh perspective.

On his second lap, roof stinging from rolling off a sharp corner taken too fast, proximity alerts pinged him. Someone was driving toward the track. Caution overcame frustration and stubborn dislike of the universe in general, and he brought his communication suite online. One second on the Autobot network, and Smokescreen slammed the connection closed so hard the circuit boards should have clicked.

The one mech - _the one fragging Autobot!_ - he wanted nothing to do with right now, and here Prowl was.

Yeah, well, like the Pit would he sit there and let the tactician stare at him in peace anymore. He'd had his fill of the unexplained fixation. Before, he hadn't known what to do. Two weeks of reacting instead of acting had left him avoiding the mech, ducking out of rooms and turning around to walk away in the halls. Now Prowl had shown up here, where he'd been trying to take a _break_ from finding a solution.

Gut-deep instinct snapped a decision through his head in a lightning bolt of realization. Exhilaration sparked in the afterimages, and he laughed wildly.

Prowl could look at him all he wanted. He could stare. There was no law against it, and he wasn't harming anyone. It was weird and borderline stalking, but since Smokescreen hadn't told him to stop, Prowl could do it.

Smokescreen didn't have to sit still for it.

A blue, red, and grey blur tore past the entry point and into a third lap before his black-and-white doppelganger even came into sight. Welcome to the race, Prowl. Kiss his bumper and eat exhaust.

His focus narrowed to the road ahead of him, the next bend and the ruts on the long stretches. Part of his attention stayed on the slivers of road behind him he could see through his rearview mirrors, but mostly he threw himself into driving. His suspension system started to protest the rough road, and he impatiently turned off the warning alerts. Numbness set in soon after, his axles aching from the rattling until they lost feeling. That could be dangerous if one of his wheels loosened. It was reckless driving, Ratchet would tell him, and there would be scolding later for stupidity if he ended up in the medbay.

Smokescreen pushed past the warnings. He had to. He and Prowl, they were both Datsun 280ZXs, but Smokescreen's shoulder-mounted weaponry made him heavier and therefore fractionally slower. It should have been a speed disadvantage, but his engine growled defiance of the facts. That fact wouldn't lose him the race. He refused.

Facts had their place in life, but it was what a mech did with them that determined how events unfolded. He hadn't been assigned to Tactical because he knew how to push Decepticon and Autobot stats around a battlefield simulation. He played the game, and he played it well.

Tacticians cheated facts. Information could be manipulated from unimportant to vital, data twisted from sparse to rich, and weaknesses found in impenetrable strength by the right tactician. Facts could become falsehoods under the right circumstances. A tactician used facts to his advantage, either by devising a strategy using them or by working around them.

Prowl was faster; that was a fact. The context of that fact being that he was faster _on a highway._

This wasn't a highway. This was barely a road. While he had the ability to drive faster than his fellow Praxian, the question was whether or not he dared to on a track like this.

Smokescreen pushed himself to his limits, betting that Prowl wouldn't chance it. It was a gamble, but wasn't it always? He drove in a brash rush, slowing down only when he absolutely had to. His weight rocked him up onto two tires more than a few times as he cut corners at too high a speed, and his undercarriage scraped over rough ground as he rode the inside 'curb' around curves. Whole plant stalks and broken sticks jammed in his wheel wells. He yelped as one risk too many slid him off the road at the top of a hill, but the rapidfire jumble of whirling trees and a painful crunch from one of his mirrors stopped in a jarring _WHUMP_.

Panic turned to utter elation. The speed high soared, and he laughed. He'd flipped down the incline and slammed onto all four wheels on the track at the bottom. Talk about luck. Still laughing in foolhardy triumph, he swung his back end around and accelerated with a fierce yell.

Fourth lap, same as the first: little bit louder, little bit worse!

Hurt like a glitch, too.

He didn't let the dents slow him down. Frag, they spurred him on. A glimpse of black and white among the trees below him as he tackled the steepest hill on the course put a fire in his tanks, too. He all but _flew_ off the top of the hill, crashing down in a strut-bending bounce that woke his suspension system from its numb stupor. A hot burst of agony singed across his axles and turned even his lugnuts to tiny balls of pain. His engine howled protest even though he muted his vocalizer. He snarled at his body's complaints and put the pedal to the metal.

Prowl could chase him, but Smokescreen didn't have to be caught.

Fifth lap, and he stopped seeing even a hint of Prowl in his rearview mirror. That didn't mean the chase had ended, so he hunkered down over his wheels and raced onward. He wouldn't be tricked, slaggit.

Prowl's absence behind him made more sense as he passed the track's starting line to begin his sixth lap. A police car sat on the sidelines, covered in a heavy film of dust and looking a little worse for wear. Either Prowl had given up on catching him, or he'd decided the race was only upsetting Smokescreen more. Which was true, but the real cause of Smokescreen's confused hash of emotions was the mech's mere presence.

He indulged in an angry, frustrated, _fed-up with this_ scream as he zoomed past, touching his brakes just enough to swerve his rear wheels wildly, and dirt and small stones sprayed in Prowl's direction. Sirens blipped in surprise, but he was gone and away around the first curve before he saw any other reaction.

Just for the petty satisfaction of it, he took the sixth lap determined to beat his last time. If Prowl had wanted him to calm down, he should have gone away. Parking to wait him out smacked of patronizing him. Maybe that wasn't a rational feeling, but that's what it felt like.

On the seventh lap, he slowed down some. His systems were refusing to be pushed aside any longer. Since his combat protocols were offline, his body stopped letting him shunt aside the warnings. It bombard him with requests for maintenance, recharge, and a ceasefire on the onslaught of abuse he'd been putting it through. Internal reports were a mass of red and yellow alerts informing him of how badly he'd treated himself. The arm of his dashboard temperature gauge had been stuck in the red for half an hour. Fuel readouts told him he had a quarter tank left, and his power plant had been generating charge well above optimal levels for three hours, now.

Physical energy drained, he eased off the accelerator. His mind trembled with a surplus of emotional energy, churning in disturbed patterns beneath the ebbing speed high, but the blinding zip of thoughts going every which way had settled down some. He felt clearer. Confused, of course, and angry without precisely knowing why, but he didn't feel like he wanted to punch a wall anymore.

Feeling better, he drove past Prowl to start his eighth lap at a reasonable speed. A leisure drive instead of a race, and he took the time to loosen tension-clamped parts deep in his chassis. He rolled his windows down and ran his vents on high, airing out the stale tang of metal and grease.

When he crested the tallest hill this time, he stopped. It'd hurt later when he moved again, but he wanted to cool down. This was a nice area for it. There were trees to his left and a grassy slope to his right, and the breeze poured through his open windows. Yeah. This would do for a rest area.

His hood popped, and hot metal ticked as cool air met his overheated engine block. Smokescreen sighed and opened his doors as well, flexing his seats back to stretch before letting them click back upright again. Hydraulics whined, and he groaned at the ache in his suspension system. He pushed up as high as it would go, wheels wiggling back and forth to get the kinks out. Joints creaked and clicked. Even shaking the dust off his doors twinged in his hinges, earning a weary laugh. There was no reason his door hinges should hurt. It echoed the exhaustion settling into him now that he'd stopped.

He hurt, but he hurt how the war had made him forget he could hurt: body pushed to its limits, maxxed out and tired without fear of attack dogging him. It hurt, but it felt good. He felt disconnected. Dazed, but in a pleasant way.

He'd needed this.

Now that he'd stopped, nature returned to normal around him in gradual phases. Insects buzzed in the grass. A bird chirped. One of those nasty tree rodent things Red Alert hated - so many nuts found in supposedly secure locations, _so many_ - chattered and eyed the Datsun as if evaluating it for potential storage use. Smokescreen prudently closed the doors on his left side, just in case.

After about an hour, proximity alerts woke him from the stand-by doze he'd fallen into. Reluctant processors whirred back online, and Smokescreen blearily checked his surroundings. It took him a moment to identify the sound of an approaching engine.

At the base of the hill, a black-and-white Datsun drove slowly out of the trees and braked to a stop.

Muuuuuh. No, he didn't want to deal with this yet.

It didn't look like he had a choice in the matter, however. The good news was that he felt more mulish discontent than jittery unease, so that was an improvement of sorts. Despite how he didn't want to, he had to face Prowl eventually. If the mech was finally going to talk to him, that was.

The gambler pulled himself together, shutting his doors and hood before starting his engine. Ouch. Cold start on a sore body. He hurt down to his wires. A nut of some sort had been wedged in his left front tire, too. Squirrels were a menace.

Below, Prowl waited another minute before driving forward. Smokescreen angled his remaining side mirror so he could watch him approach, but humans walked faster than the other mech was driving. Prowl came up the hill at a snail's pace, left tires riding up on the piled dirt on the edge of the road as he got closer. He seemed to be aiming to slide in and park beside him.

Smokescreen's engine revved a grumpy noise, and his door opened a couple inches in threat. How about not. He'd block the mech if he tried.

It was a rude move, but Prowl accepted it gracefully enough. He rolled to a halt behind him, slightly to the side but not nosed up alongside him. There he idled. His windshield wipers flipped back and forth every thirty seconds or so, although the sun was out.

What, did he want Smokescreen to say something? Primus, the things he could say. They flashed through his mind too fast to pick just one.

_'__What the frag's going on?'_

_'__What do you want from me?' _

_'__SpecOps set up a betting pool on when you'll get your gears assembled and make a move. We could clean up.'_

Four minutes of silence ticked by, excruciatingly awkward and getting worse by the second. The air thickened between them. All the things Prowl hadn't said for millions of years and everything Smokescreen wanted to cry, demand, throw - they hovered, stagnating.

At long last, Prowl coughed his vocalizer through reset and ventured, "How are you?"

Really? Seriously. This was what they were going to do. "Fine. Tired," he said, voice flat. "You?"

"I am…fine."

Had Prowl hesitated? That'd sounded hesitant. Prowl didn't hesitate like that. It'd almost been like he'd been searching for words. And the mech was crouched low on his wheels, looking oddly small for someone Smokescreen was used to seeing as confident and poised. What the frag was going on, here?

Another muffled cough. "Are you, ah, feeling better?"

"Fine." Strange or not, Smokescreen wasn't inclined to help the mech out. This wasn't the time for small talk, and he found it rather insulting that Prowl had followed him for this.

Smokescreen's engine made quiet, grouchy growls, and Prowl sank lower on his tires. His wipers flicked twice in a row. The silence built back up in layers that weighed more every minute. A wall of things unsaid stood between them.

It'd solidified to the point Smokescreen swore he heard a crack when Prowl suddenly spoke. "Optimus Prime sent me to speak with you."

What? Had he - _what?!_ "Let me get this straight," Smokescreen hissed, furious and unable to process the blitz of exasperation and annoyance rampaging through his mind. His open door slammed shut and locked in a loudly offended click. "You can't say a word to me about what's going on," whatever the frag it was, "without Optimus signing off on it? Do you have to get orders to open up your blasted mouth?"

The black-and-white Datsun's engine stuttered, and his windshield wipers gave that strange flick. "No. Not exactly. He did not order me to do anything. He asked me why I have not explained myself to you and strongly suggested that I seek you out. It - I have attempted to speak with you. Multiple times. It has rarely gone according to plan." He sank down on his tires until his front bumper touched dirt. "Orders would certainly make this easier. You are," he paused, and wipers squeaked across the dry glass of his windshield in what Smokescreen belatedly realized was a sign of nerves. He'd never seen the stoic mech do that before. "That is, I find you," Prowl's voice trailed off until he had to cough to reset the volume function on his vocalizer, realizing none of the long dribble of mumbles had been heard. If brakelights could stare, then Smokescreen's were doing exactly that at him. "I find you, ah, that is to say, you are - attractive. I - I would - We might - **You** might - "

Smokescreen swiveled his rear view mirror, checking that they were still on a hill, still surrounded by squirrels and nature. Because he could swear he'd fallen into Bizarro World. Smokescreen's irritation puffed into a baffled cloud as he watched the Second-in-Command of the Autobot faction lose his gears behind him.

Prowl kept starting and abandoning sentences, trying on their beginning words and discarding them midway through before he actually gave away whatever it was he was attempting to spit out. He rose up on his wheels, mirrors twitching and windshield wipers speeding up with every failed attempt. His voice hiked a teensy bit higher and faster with every fumbled attempt to speak.

Smokescreen had never seen Prowl flustered before. He wasn't entirely sure that's what he was witnessing now, but it seemed to be the case. "Prowl."

The other Datsun deflated, giving up. "Yes?"

How about they tried yes or no statements. Those were fairly easy to get out coherently. "You like my looks," he stated, giving it the intonation of a question.

A small engine rev agreed with that. A low mumble that could have been missed accompanied it, but Smokescreen was listening closely.

His own engine revved in surprise. "You, uh. You think I'm pretty?"

Lo and behold, a car could squirm. Prowl rocked on his wheels, steering system wriggling his tires in vastly uncomfortable twitches. "Yes. I…your colors are nice." He sounded unsure of himself, and Smokescreen wondered if he were waiting for approval of his opinion.

"Well, er, thanks. I'm glad you think so?" Primus, it was like the first time he'd met Bluestreak, when the gunner had been a bundle of anxiety over making a good first impression. Smokescreen had walked on glass around him for days before the chatterbox calmed down, reassured that he hadn't screwed everything up for ever and ever.

Kind of exactly like that. Huh. "Are you afraid of me?" he asked, probing.

"No."

"Uh-huh." He eyed the Datsun in his rearview mirror. _Something_ had the mech unable to piece together a complete sentence around him. The squirming continued, slightly subdued by a poor attempt at an impassive facade, but Prowl seemed far too aware of his inability to deal. Embarrassment sweated from every fidget. "Are you intimidated by me?"

Prowl hesitated almost a full minute before answering. "…yes."

"Why?"

Hydraulics wheezed as Prowl sagged on his tires, visibly dismayed by the question. This time, Smokescreen let him stew, sputtering half-formed sentences and coughing his vocalizer through reset multiple times. The squirming intensified. Dignity was abandoned as a lost cause within seconds.

He waited, curious. By the time Prowl shifted into reverse and started inching away, he thought he understood. Maybe. It didn't fit the officer as he knew him, but then again, how would he know what Prowl was like in private? If this craziness had taught him anything, it was that he knew nothing about Prowl. The mech didn't seem to have a personal life, but everybody had something going on outside of duty. Whatever Prowl's personal life was like, it just didn't happen in public. Smokescreen couldn't remember even a rumor of such a thing, anyway.

Bringing an intensely private mech's personal life out into public could cause paralyzing anxiety, even if the mech were Prowl. Perhaps especially because it was Prowl. The Prime at least had an unofficial-official aide/friend to help him stay connected to who he was outside of his rank. Did his Executive Officer have anyone who saw the mech isolated inside the rank?

"Is it because you like me?" Smokescreen asked, and Prowl stalled.

Outright stalled, engine off and vocalizer failing. Gravity rolled him backward.

Smokescreen couldn't help but chortle. He smothered it. Seemed that he'd guessed right. It'd be cruel to laugh at loud at someone who was - well, who was this shy. Extremely shy. It made more sense than it didn't, but wow. Very shy, indeed.

Garbled feedback blatted, and the other Datsun rebooted before he rolled too far down the hill. Prowl immediately braked to an ungraceful stop, turned at an angle on the road where his back left tire had thumped off the dirt 'curb'. It took him a split second to realize what had happened, and Smokescreen could hear his locks click from up on the top of the hill. Embarrassment strobed his lightbar red and blue before he shut it off. The _screep-screep_ tempo of windshield wipers across dry glass picked up. He straightened out, trying to drive casual and not managing it in the slightest. He steered like a marionette in quick, jerky corrections.

In a weird way, the whole thing was sort of cute. Still exasperating, but insight made the unknown understandable instead of frightening. Smokescreen ironed the laughter out of his voice and asked, "Has all of this been just because you like me?" He meant the watching and gradual infiltration of his routine. Also, the silence. Prowl apparently had exceedingly poor communication skills outside of a professional setting.

Prowl reset his vocalizer for the umpteenth time. "I have tried to speak with you prior to this. It is - I find it - "

"Intimidating."

"Yes. You are…you are very pretty," he said, helplessly aware of how lame that explanation sounded out loud.

Smokescreen snorted through his vents. "Tracks is pretty. Sunstreaker is a stunner. If you were interested in looks, you'd be chasing their taillights, not mine."

The black-and-white shifted awkwardly on his wheels. "I am not - they are not - you. You are. I." He reversed another meter, as if the distance helped him think.

For all Smokescreen knew, it did. It would explain why the mech watched him so obsessively but only spoke to him in passing, most of the time. Chitchat didn't require much thought. Or maybe it required every bit of courage a mech had.

If that were the case, then this conversation required Herculean effort. "I do like your - your colors. You are - attractive. Not in the way Tracks or Sunstreaker are, but - I mean no offense by that!" His front end dipped, headlights flashing on. "They are conventionally beautiful, and their looks appeal to many. You are pretty because your model is familiar to me without being…identical. To me or to another Praxian model. I. I find the small differences fascinating."

His voice pitched fractionally higher in self-consciousness as he dredged the words up. This was a slow, faltering confession long in coming. It wasn't going as planned in any way, shape, or form, which only made Prowl's wipers flip faster as he grew progressively more flustered. "I had noticed, of course, but I did not fully appreciate how you looked until you were dismissed from my division. It was not my decision, but your commanding officer at the time brought you to my attention by recommending you remain in a consulting position. That…is unusual, for a dismissal. A dismissal for an addiction, even more so. It - I understood why, after observing you. You have a unique mind that I - you calculate odds instinctively, without the artificial aids most tacticians require. It is skill that I admire greatly. You have a more limited capacity for processing, but your tactical gambits are unrestrained by computer programs. You make immense leaps of instinct that can be wrong but are incredibly valuable for estimating the mental factor of living mechs instead of computers. Your belief in luck and hunches is merely subconscious calculations made with a natural talent that I do not possess. My tactical database logs your input as valid but cannot permit me to calculate in the same manner. You have internal coding where I have external hardware." The rush of enthusiasm faltered, and Prowl reset his vocalizer yet again. "That is, studying your file, I found you to be an invaluable resource, and your mind…you are…"

Smokescreen tensed on his tires as the other Datsun accelerated hard, tires throwing up dirt in the rush. He threw himself forward like he'd only have the courage to do this once. He jerked to a halt right behind Smokescreen's bumper. "I did not consider - My battle computer did not permit me to consider you as a romantic partner," he skittered over the words as if suggesting it might be presuming too much, "until I was informed of your position under Optimus Prime. As someone outside my command, that allowed me to see you as - I could - I could appreciate you as I - as you - you are pretty, yes, but your mind is intriguing." Passion ran under his voice, pouring out in the vague hope that if he got everything out, it would somehow convince the brightly-colored gambler of his sincerity. "I knew it before, but our respective ranks made acting on that knowledge inappropriate. The change in your rank changed how my external constraints could perceive your - I could appreciate **you** instead of your abilities - I - "

"I have watched you watching the other Autobots. You have - you have an ability to - to inspire trust in others. You make friends with an easy comradie that I…envy, in a way." He backed off Smokescreen's bumper but blurted out the words with increasing urgency. "I envy it because you create genuine connections while using your interpersonal relationships like a spy or a lawyer collecting evidence. Your assessment of the social structure around you is based on the logic within your emotion, yet you emote without constraints of reason. Logic does not determine how you feel. Neither overrides or discards the other. It is a balance that I - I apologize, it is difficult for me to explain why you amaze me so, but you do, and I would be incredibly honored if you would let me - if you might - we could - "

Silence fell for a terrible moment, seconds ticking by in ungainly lumps of time counted by two self-conscious Autobots. A warm flush of abashed pride had Smokescreen tangled up inside. The glowing picture painted of him was over the top and flattering in a factual way that he couldn't argue against. Prowl, on the other hand, had talked himself into a corner he couldn't get out of without spitting out the words stuck in his vocalizer. Smokescreen twisted his mirrors to look at the trees, the grass, anything but the black-and-white Datsun parked behind him. Prowl swiveled his front tires, digging furrows into the dirt.

Two cars squirming in the middle of a dirt road. The squirrels failed to be impressed.

"I have no idea how to say this," the tactician admitted after an agonizingly long wait. "It is becoming clear to me that the failure rate of my plans concerning you increases the more variables I attempt to plan for. Compensating for...I should not have…" His voice fell to an agitated mutter.

Smokescreen wondered how many plans had failed in order to get whatever statistic Prowl was working from. He was briefly curious about how many times in the past few million years he'd been approached successfully compared to unsuccessfully. Prowl had detailed plans for everything, apparently.

The black-and-white Datsun drew himself up on his tires. "I like you, Smokescreen." He sounded like that had taken every scrap of courage he possessed.

"Are you asking me out?" Smokescreen asked, a little bemused.

A distressed splutter came from Prowl's engine. "No!"

"No?"

The spluttering worsened, as if the mech had flooded his own engine. "I meant yes! Forgive me, I - yes. I would like - " His vocalizer cut off, and air whistled as his vents sucked in a deep breath. His wipers flicked quickly. When he spoke again, he sounded calmer but odd. Different than his normal voice, although that wasn't saying much compared to how he'd been acting since he pulled up. "Would you accompany me on a date?"

"Um." Well. That was certainly something.

Meek. Prowl sounded meek. Submissive, even, which was a total swap from the authority he practically radiated as the Prime's Executive Officer and tactician. Smokescreen had never heard him sound like that before, and the shy little tone was directed at him.

"Smokescreen? There is no conflict. The chain of command will not be compromised. We are free to - "

He interrupted the nervous assurance with an irritated huff from his muffler, blowing exhaust into Prowl's grill. "It's not about whether or not we **can**. I know we can. I just don't know if I **want** to."

"…oh." And that right there was the smallest hurt voice in the history of rejection.

Smokescreen wanted to transform and kick the mech in the tailpipe. "Oh, frag your motherboard. You've been stalking me, Prowl! What did you expect me to do, fall into your arms? That's not how romance works, you know. Following somebody around and climbing into their life is creepy, not romantic."

"I did not…um." If anything, Prowl shrank down further. As much as tacticians turned facts to their advantage, they still had to recognize the truth when it smacked them in the face. "I have never pressed myself into your personal life. I - I know you are not comfortable knowing how I have observed - " He coughed through vocalizer reset, trying to avoid addressing the constant watching from afar. Whether or not it'd been adoration, it had still been staring. Basic manners covered that one, at the very least. "I **have** attempted to open this conversation with you for the past two weeks, but it - that is, I could not - you have not - "

"Don't you dare push responsibility for this on me. Don't you even dare," Smokescreen interrupted.

Prowl's engine had begun whining, stressed and harsh as he fought for words. "No! No, I am sorry, that is not what I meant at all. I did not mean to make you guilty or uncomfortable in any way, and I will - I will cease my attentions if they are unwelcome." The words came out reluctantly, shuddering through him as he said them. It was painfully obvious that he would be sparkbroken if Smokescreen turned him down, but Prowl was a mech of his word. It would be his duty to abide by the wishes of a fellow Autobot in such a personal matter. "You do not owe me anything, I understand that. I am simply asking if you would - if you might consider me as someone you could…like." His tires veered to the side uneasily, and his voice dropped to a timid suggestion. "Perhaps love?"

Smokescreen flexed his seats as he thought things over, pushing past the frustration to look for its source. As he'd said to Optimus Prime earlier, Prowl hadn't _exactly_ been stalking him, however close it'd gotten. The mech had delicately worked his way into Smokescreen's life while holding ulterior motives, which wasn't illegal but had made him question the social equations he relied on every day. Prowl had become an unknown overnight, and this unknown wanted something from him. It alarmed him. He didn't like it.

"This isn't easy for me, you know," he said. "You've dumped a pile of repressed feelings on me and are asking me to reciprocate, and I've never even thought of you like that. I don't know **what** I feel about you right now. It's never been an option before. You're - you. I'm me. Yeah, maybe I should have picked up on the signs, but you were hiding this like a bolt in a repairshop. You've been there all along but it's just, like, you weren't on my radar for potential interest in this area **at all**. Do you expect me to have Ratchet install an affection update and suddenly we'll be a couple? Dating doesn't work like that. We're not even really **friends**, Prowl!"

Ah, and there it was. That had been under his unease all along. His coolant reservoir pinged him a warning as his temperature gauge bobbed upward, but he dismissed the alert. He intended to finish what he had to say.

"We're associates. Acquaintances. Whatever it is you feel toward me, it's been entirely one-sided the whole course of you feeling it. You can't expect me to go from nothing to something without at least some time to build a foundation. I've had no hint you wanted me like this. None. Now I do, and I don't know what to think. I haven't had time to think about it, about how I feel about it, about even having feelings about it. About you." He threw himself into reverse, abruptly crashing his bumper against Prowl hard enough to dent them both. Sirens bleeped in shock, but the police car locked his brakes and hunkered down to take in the irritation pushing him down the hill one turn of Smokescreen's tires at a time. "There are mechs taking bets on us that have figured out more about our dynamics than I know. Do you get that? They're figuring out how we fit together, and here I am without a fragging clue what you really even want from me! This is the first I've heard of any interest you have in me, and you're skipping straight to asking for a date. Millions of years watching me, and we aren't even friends."

"What is it you want from a relationship with me? You want a date? Two dates? Ten?" He laughed a touch hysterically as Prowl's wheels slid through the dirt. "What do you even consider a date? I can't see you as the movie type. Long drives, walks on the beach, training in hand-to-hand together, what is it that you **want to do** with me that you don't think you could have gotten from being my friend?"

A timid whisper answer him, barely slipped past the embarrassment of saying it out loud, "Well…interfacing."

"Are you - no, what am I thinking, this is you. You're not joking." That was one way to break the tension. Smokescreen clamped his brakes so tight his axles ached, complaining that he'd already done a number on them today, now cut it out with the abuse. He ignored them. His mind had just been yanked off in a different direction and was having its own issues, please and thank you. "How in the Pit did you jump from us falling in love to 'facing being the one thing you couldn't get from us being friends?!"

The radiator against his bumper grew noticeably hotter. Prowl stayed mute, but Smokescreen had never seen a more mortified Autobot in his life. Metal scraped on metal as the mech did his best to melt into a puddle of embarrassment that could then sink into the ground and disappear from sight.

Having no luck at vanishing into thin air, eventually he had to hash together a disjointed bundle of words that spilled out in a hurried mumble under the pressure of Smokescreen's silence. It put his previous attempts at speaking on par with one of the Prime's famous speeches. Smokescreen filtered some information from the puddle of incoherency formerly known as Prowl, but it took several rounds of, "What was that?" and "A little louder, please," which reduced the shy mech into a writhing bundle of tires and emergency lights.

Smokescreen felt a little bad about that, but not enough to let Prowl off the hook. It'd taken the intervention of their leader to make the tactician open up; Smokescreen wasn't going to waste the opportunity. He wasn't going to wait another million years to get an explanation for the mech's behavior.

Even if the explanation was an outdated, old-fashioned idea of what was and was not proper for mechs to do with anyone other than their significant other. Right. A relationship as done by the rules.

"You realize I have fragbuddies, right?" he asked after processing Prowl's attempt at communication. "I frag for fun. Lots of mechs do. I haven't gone off and really **dated** anyone since...huh, since that trader." Memory made the relationship seem much sweeter than it'd been. He shook the memories off and blinked his tail lights at the car behind him. "You don't need love for a good clanging. Uh, not that I'm suggesting we jump each other, " definitely not with the way Prowl's transmission slipped a gear at the mere idea, "but I like fragging. We could just, y'know, see how things are in a few weeks and maybe try it." A second loud _gronk_, and Smokescreen chuckled.

He preferred keeping his circle of casual fragbuddies within his friends, but he'd give Prowl a chance. The mech was turning out to be endearingly awkward, and he couldn't think of a reason why _not_ now that he had some context for what was going on. That wasn't sufficient reason _to_ interface, but it wasn't something he'd ever thought about. Prowl didn't generate any interest in him, at least not like that. However, he sincerely believed that he'd like to talk to the mech more.

He wouldn't rule out the possibility. "I'm not promising anything. I'm still not sure what I actually feel about you, but I do know you're not bad looking. If you can keep it no-strings-attached, I'll think about it."

The strained engine sputtering picked up, along with the screeping of windshield wipers beating back and forth. A nonsense sound came from Prowl's vocalizer before he reset and managed real words. "That would - I - but - " His engine shut off and restarted in a lower gear, forcefully calmed. "That would be nice," he said softly. "I am aware that you have many lovers. Casual interfacing is not a deviant behavior, but it is not - it requires a level of intimacy I cannot classify as shallow, personally. Not that I am implying you are shallow! I meant to say that you are capable of interfacing without attachment," he rushed to say, then realized he'd wandered off point while giving a backhanded insult. He pulled himself back together. "I - I do not know if I can separate interfacing and…what I feel."

Honesty, plain and tender. The last three words rang with aching truth. One-sided or not, what Prowl felt was laid out before Smokescreen in a confession. The mech was smitten. Had a crush. Head over wheels in love.

He'd be lying if he wasn't slightly flattered by that. His social algorithms were starting to adapt to the never-before-seen aspects of Prowl, and Smokescreen wasn't one for being thrown by strange situations for very long. The creepiness factor was lowering as the conversation went out, and the frustration of not knowing what was going on was there with it.

Studying him through his rearview mirror, Smokescreen had to ask, "How do you like 'facing?"

Aaaaaand just like that, from relatively calm to paralyzed in self-conscious embarrassment in one second flat. "I - I do not - "

"Aw, c'mon. You must have thought about it." Nobody stared in lovey-dovey yearning at someone for this slagging long without having some naughty thoughts. "You like it hard and fast, or something slow? Where? My room or yours, or you like it out under the stars like we're back home?" He nudged his back bumper against the stunned mech and purred his engine, letting the vibration run through Prowl's grill and tremble across hood and engine block. "Haven't done it in altmode in a while."

A tiny squeak came from behind him. That right there was the sound of a mind running smack into a wall. A wall made of filthy, wonderfully erotic thoughts that Prowl could not possibly push a single word of past the large weight standing on his vocalizer.

Smokescreen took pity on him. "Tell me you've at least got an idea of what you wanna do together?"

"Yes."

That was a good yes. That was a yes couched in a breathy tone. He liked that tone. It was still odd hearing it come from Prowl, but he'd just have to get used to that. "Okay. You know you're going to have to talk it over with me if we ever get to that point, right?"

"Yes." Prowl hesitated. After a moment, he gave the faintest nudge forward. "Would a written proposal be acceptable?"

"What in the - was that a joke? Like, a real joke?"

The hint of initiative ceased as if it'd never begun. "I apologize. That was inappropriate and - "

Smokescreen reversed and ground his bumper into Prowl's grill with a deft wiggle of his back tires. "Nah, it was funny, but your timing's lousy. I'd laugh for you, but the moment's passed."

A choked little noise met the blatant teasing. "I - "

"Prowl," he said, as gentle as he could, "**relax**." He pulled away a bit, because he didn't want to offer too much encouragement. Reassurance, yes, but nothing more. Not yet. "Stop acting like I'm going to run away if you say the wrong thing. You know me. You know I won't do that. Give me time to get to know **you**."

Silence fell between them, filled only with the sound of two engines: one idling, one racing nervously.

"I will try," Prowl said after a while. "It is…difficult, expressing myself. Circumventing my battle computer does not come easily to me, especially when exposing weaknesses that could be turned against me in the future. Not by you, not directly. I do not mean you would harm me. You have never used your position under Optimus Prime to abuse others, and my rank ensures you cannot - " He winced, tires pointing inward. "Please be patient with me. My battle computer calculates the odds of every decision I make, and sometimes I must build precarious logic trees to make the connection I feel instead of one reason dictates. I like you, but expressing my…interest. Affection. The probability of future harm immediately becomes unacceptable from a tactical standpoint, and it takes time and effort to make my battle computer allow me to act on my thoughts. It causes me to be rationally afraid of the irrationality of what I am feeling."

Admitting to liking someone did make a mech more vulnerable. "Plus, you're shy."

The black-and-white Datsun reversed a couple meters, almost indignant. "I would not describe myself as - that is not - you are very pretty!"

Smokescreen didn't bother replying to that. It sounded pathetic enough on its own. "You're shy. Really shy. As in, 'inviting you to sit with me in the common room would make you freeze up' level of shy."

"I would not." Prowl's headlights flickered on and off. "Is…that something we might do together?" He sounded vaguely apprehensive.

"Friends do that. Would you sit down if I saved you a chair at the next card game? You don't have to play. Most of the mechs watching us pull up a chair to talk for a while." It'd be good neutral ground to be around each other a bit, see if they could even try to be friends of some kind.

Something that Prowl understood, although he said, "I do not typically spend much time in the common room." It came out a statement of fact instead of a protest, and hydraulics hissed as he settled down over his tires to turn the idea over. His windshield wipers flipped. The idea of being around him in public in a close setting had the tactician jittery. "I can stay to fuel instead of taking my ration back to my office."

Compromise. All right, Prowl would change a habit for him, so Smokescreen would meet him halfway. "I could bring my cube to your office sometimes, if that's okay."

The fidgeting stopped dead, then suddenly resumed twice as fast. Amused, he watched Prowl squirm. The subtle little motions of anxiety had tipped over into nervous excitement. It wasn't a date, but obviously having Smokescreen to himself made him happy enough.

"I would like that." Rolling forward, he steered to the side and slid up partway beside Smokescreen. This time, the gambler let him. "I would like that very much. Thank you."

Careful, ready to be rejected, he eased close enough that the warm fuzzing electromagnetic feel of living metal met between them. After millions of years of watching from a distance, his deepest held desire was clawing at his circuits. Smokescreen tensed, but he didn't try to touch the sleek, bright plating beside him. After a minute of warily waiting for more, Smokescreen settled down again.

A prolonged shiver ran from Prowl's grill to back bumper. "Thank you," he repeated, and the depth of his gratitude couldn't be measured.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**


	3. Pt 3

**Title: ** Playing the Long Odds

**Warning: **Autobots. Awkward. _.

**Rating: ** R

**Continuity: **G1

**Characters: **Autobots, Smokescreen, Prowl

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.

**Motivation (Prompt): **"_." Commission by DisplacedNoble.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

**Part Three**

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

Smokescreen was hiding in his quarters.

It wasn't the most mature response he'd ever had, but it was probably the safest. The officers were out to corner him, and he had no intention of being cornered. One or two at a time he could handle, but all of them?

No, thank you. He had a door, a lock, and a professed willingness to shoot anyone who tried to hack it. Jazz was good, but even he had barely dodged in time.

He wasn't opening the door for anybody.

"Smokescreen? Smokescreen, I know you're in there. Everybody knows you're in there, except maybe Cosmos but that's probably just because he's up in orbit and running silent so nobody's updated him, but he'll know by the end of Tuesday, so that doesn't count."

Smokescreen ran his hand down his face. Okay, anybody except for Bluestreak. "Yeah, I'm in here. Hold on, I gotta kind of," he regarded the pile of stuff wedged into the door track, "unbarricade things in here."

"I can wait! Patience is a virtue, or so they say, and by 'they' I mean the humans. Do we consider patience a virtue? I don't see why not, but virtue has different meanings from culture to culture. I think we have different virtues than the Americans, and they have different ones than, say, the Soviets."

Chatter washed over him as he pried up the various thin bits of stuff that he'd jammed into the door track. He'd wanted to prevent it from sliding open. It hadn't seemed like enough when up against someone like Ironhide trying to get into the room, but it was proving to be a stubborn barrier to getting out. Smokescreen blew out hot air and piled six datapads, a game cube, a trophy plaque, and an ammunition box on his room's narrow table. All of them had bent corners from the door.

At last, Smokescreen straightened up and palmed the room's access panel. Lock: offline. "Hey, Bluestreak. How're things goin - oh, you've **got** to be kidding me!"

Outside his door stood a fellow Praxian who shared his altmode. Unfortunately, it wasn't the Praxian Smokescreen had opened the door for.

Prowl offered one of the two energon cubes he carried. "You have not been in the common room. I thought you might need to refuel." That got him further staring. Doors dipped sheepishly, and Prowl's optics dropped to the cubes in his hands. "You did not respond when I pinged you earlier. This seemed a viable method of securing access."

The staring turned to a full-on glare of disbelief and narrow optics.

The tactician tried a feeble smile of appeasement. The meek look was ruined when he hocked oddly to reset his vocalizer back to his own voice. His doors wilted further down when the glare didn't relent. "This is not a plan I am proud of."

That's because it was the lamest excuse and dirtiest trick ever. "I didn't open the door because you're the one who got me into this mess," Smokescreen snapped, ducking out into the hall to glance both ways. "I've got officers on my tailpipe 24/7 just itching to give me the _'Hurt Our Friend and Die'_ Talk, and we're not even - "

Aw frag, black-and-white frame with blue visor at nine o'clock, cornering at the intersection and closing fast. Either Jazz had been lying in wait, or Red Alert had tipped him off. Evade! Evade!

Well, nobody could say he didn't act on instinct. Smokescreen whirled around and shoved Prowl into his room. Optics wide, the tactician stumbled in ahead of him. Smokescreen pressed in right behind, already reaching for the access panel with the hand not on a lightbar. Prowl stood stock-still the moment he stopped pushing. The door slid shut, and the lock clicked into place a second later.

"Move, please!" Smokescreen squeezed past wide-spread doors and grabbed the first objects that came to hand off the table. Prowl immediately plastered himself to the wall, trying to make room as he dodged back and forth, fortifying the door. There wasn't a lot of space in a single-soldier room, but they had long experience making due with space constraints and their frametypes. Back to the wall, Prowl held the cubes up so Smokescreen could zip by underneath.

Only once the pile of stuff was securely wedged into the door track did the gambler's fan rate slow. He turned to slouch against the door. "Like I said," he said dryly, "we're not even dating and I'm already getting the friendly threats of bodily harm." Prowl's doors went up, alarmed, and he waved a hand at the other mech. "I know, I know. It's not serious or anything, but when the entire officer cadre descends on you while fingering their guns…" Mouth quirking in a weary grin, he shrugged. He was lucky Mirage and Hound both liked him, or he'd have been getting pinned down at the end of every shift. As it was, he was being smuggled around the _Ark_ like an invisible package of contraband. It had turned into a SpecOps game: agents versus officers. "They're out to scare the slag out of me, and it's working. I hadn't expected a mob."

Prowl blinked at him. "Neither had I. I can - I will speak with them. Inform them that we are not even friends." His feet shuffled in tiny, almost imperceptible shifts of weight that could have been missed if Smokescreen hadn't been looking for the signs. Yep. The mech seemed composed, but his poise was cracking a bit at the seams.

Smokescreen smirked. "Might be harder to convince people of that than you'd think. I **did** just drag you into my room and lock the door."

So much for composure. "I! We!" A strange fizzle of static came from the frozen mask that had been Prowl's best attempt at a stoic expression. His optics darted around the tiny single-soldier room, taking in the lack of space between them. Other than the berth, a single chair, and a table, the only thing to hide behind were shelves on the walls and a storage locker at the end of the narrow room.

"Calm down!" Smokescreen scrambled up and lunged over to snag the cubes before they fell from Prowl's hands. "Nothing's going to happen! You sit here," he hooked the chair with a foot and pulled it out, "and I'll sit on the berth," he sat, "and we can talk."

Shaken, Prowl sat down as well. "Talk?"

"Talk." He handed back one cube after the instant panic passed. Prowl's face fell into neutrality, but Smokescreen wasn't fooled. Peeling back a corner and taking a swig from his own created a polite fiction that he wasn't eyeing the way white hands trembled. He couldn't tell if the tactician had gotten the shakes because they were locked in a room together or because _they were locked in a room together,_ wink wink nudge nudge. Fear and excitement looked the same under a blank expression, and Prowl did have more control over his face than the rest of his body.

"I…did wish to speak with you about," Prowl swallowed hard, "us. If you do not mind the topic." He stared as if fixated by the cube in his hands, or as if seeing Smokescreen watching him would shatter his courage. "I have evaluated my behavior and modified how I will, ah, approach you in the future. It was rude of me to have watched you the way I did, and I apologize. I will not let my gaze," optic ridges dipped as he sought for the right word, "linger on you or go out of my way to engage you in conversation unless you indicate my company is welcome. My behavior depends on how you respond, of course. I had hoped for feedback by now, but you have been avoiding me."

"Mech, I've been avoiding everyone."

Prowl risked a quick glance at him. "Yes. I realized that two shifts ago, and thus my plan." He looked away. "Such that it was. I want you to know that, in the future, you need only inform me of what you would like me to change."

Smokescreen twitched his doors and set the emptied cube on the berth beside him so he could lean back on his hands. "You're not a computer, Prowl. I can't just input feedback and get results. You have to participate, too."

Fingers tapped on the cube until Prowl made himself stop fidgeting. His optics moved to study the tabletop at his side. "This is not about me," he said softly. "I want to make you happy."

That was hard to argue against. The universe would be a better place if more people tried to make others happy, right?

Not when it came at the expense of someone else. Smokescreen opened his vents all the way and drew in cool air. Primus help him, it was like trying to convince Optimus Prime that everyone had a right to be selfish sometimes, and 'everyone' included Primes. "That self-sacrificing martyr scrap has to go. You're a mech like any other, Prowl. I can paint Bluestreak up to look like you, get him to act like you, but if I fall in love with him like that - I'm not falling in love with **Bluestreak**. You get that? Changing everything about yourself is just going to slap some paint and an act over who you are. Eventually, the paint'll wear off. Your personality will show through. And I don't want a friend dressed up like someone else. I'd rather…" He rubbed his chevron. "Promise me you'll be honest with me, Prowl. That's all I ask of my friends, in the end. Just don't lie to me. I can accept a bucketload of other issues, but when I want poker faces, I sit down at a game."

He looked up from under his hand and met wondering optics, open and vulnerable in a way he'd never seen. Hidden under the blank mask of Autobot Second, hope kindled. Smokescreen spoke directly to it. "I want to get to know you, not change you."

Lightening his tone, he flashed a smile. "But I'd appreciate if you didn't stare so much." Prowl jerked his head to the side, mortified, and he laughed outright. "I didn't mean **now**. I meant out there!" He waved at the door and the world outside.

"Oh. I…yes, of course." Prowl buried his face in the cube clutched in his hands, hiding behind it as he drank.

He had to shake his head at the tactician. The shyness still struck a chord with him. One thing he could say for staying in his quarters for days on end: he'd had time to think about Prowl. About Prowl, about him, about the two of them together in various combinations. "So what do **you** want from this?" He gestured between the two of them.

The cube emptied quickly. Too quickly, if the apprehensive tilt to Prowl's doors gave away his mood. It was hard to get a read on the mech. "I have - " He stopped, blew out a burst of air, and tried again, forcing himself to meet Smokescreen's inquiring gaze. "I have given some thought to what you said about, ah, said about. Hmm."

That, at least, was easily recognized as the hesitation of someone bringing up a vastly uncomfortable subject. Smokescreen projected patience while bracing himself on the inside. This ought to be interesting.

The dithering dragged on, but waiting paid off. Something popped under the pressure of expectant pressure, a metaphorical cork, and words poured out. "What you said about your interfacing habits. I would really - I would sincerely like - I - " Prowl's entire body drew subtly inward. Armor clamped close, fingers curled around the empty cube, and even his feet tucked between the chair legs, pressed together. "In the event you decide that it is a possibility, it would mean far more to me than a 'one night stand,' but I would not - please do not take that as discouragement. I would be overjoyed to accept anything I am given. You owe me nothing, and I would not ever presume that you do, even after such a thing. I would simply feel extremely - ah, that is, I would think that I am - I. I." He looked at the floor, the wall, the table. Anything but meeting Smokescreen's optics anymore. Level as his voice was, they could have been sitting here reviewing a strategy for the next battle. "Lucky. The phrase is, 'I got lucky.' I find that appropriate for…what it refers to. There is nothing about merit, or effort, or the probability of it happening again."

Smokescreen cocked his head to the side, one corner of his lips twitching. He couldn't tell if he wanted to smile or frown. Confusion and entertainment had equal hold on him. Most mechs used that phrase as a brag touting what they'd gotten, not as a humble statement recognizing what had been given. "I'm not into hurting people, Prowl."

The mild reproof earned him half a second of surprised optic contact. "You would not hurt me. I - want you, very much." Prowl put the cube on the table, lining the edges up carefully. "Whatever the emotional consequences may be, I accept full responsibility."

Except that he'd feel guilty as the Pit if Prowl were sparkbroken in the aftermath, whether or not it was his fault. "Do I get a say in this, or you just going to use me?"

Black-and-white doors sprang up like he'd slapped him. "Of course! It is your choice. I…oh." Optics rounded as a thought struck Prowl. "I apologize. I did not mean to place any pressure on you to decide one way or another. I intended to remove an obstacle to a - a negative decision, nothing more."

"Yeah, but where's my reason to make a positive one?" Smokescreen muttered, only half thinking about what he said. The chair barked against the floor as Prowl jolted, however, and he covered his optics with a hand. "I didn't mean like **that**. I meant in general. I don't frag around just because there's no reason not to. I frag around because it's good fun with my friends." Something that Prowl wasn't. He'd come to the conclusion that the tactician had a fine aft, but that didn't mean he wanted to chase it.

Physically, now that he'd shunted him into the category of mechs he looked at that way, Prowl landed somewhere under Jazz's level but above Sideswipe's. It'd taken some thought, but he'd eventually decided that he liked the police car look. They shared a frametype, and Smokescreen did think of himself as fairly attractive. No, not attractive. He was hot. There was a certain sort of narcissism involved in looking into mirror and thinking, _"I'd 'face the bolts off me,"_ and he'd had that thought. Looking at Prowl reminded him of looking at himself, but they weren't identical. Even the similarities were tempered by Prowl's stern authoritarianism.

Most of the time, anyway. Right now, white fingers played together in Prowl's lap. Smokescreen watched them lace and unlace, thumbs sliding over knuckles. The stiff-featured officer sitting in his room's sole chair was reserved, formal, and under that, nervous as a grounded flightframe. He smiled in absent-minded amusement at the contrast. Really, it was adorable in an unexpected way.

Prowl followed his gaze and stilled his hands, laying them flat on his thighs to stop the fidgeting. "Is there…" He hesitated, optics wandering off to the side. "Is there any way I might influence your decision? I would like to," those optics flushed a rich ocean blue in embarrassment, "give you a reason. I do not normally prefer to take the initiative in such things. I spend much of my professional life in pursuit; I would like, for once, to be pursued, but I realize you have little cause to chase me as of yet. It is - I realize - " He looked down at his hands, which were knotted together again, and admitted, "I am impatient. This urgency makes no sense, I know it, but I cannot stop…thinking. About you." A quick glance up, a flash of that deep blue, and he avoided Smokescreen's optics. "About - about us. The possibility has - it is an impulse. I apologize if the suggestion makes you uncomfortable, but if there is **anything** I can do to change your mind - "

Smokescreen couldn't hold back the chuckle when Prowl realized what he'd said this time. Rather, it wasn't what he'd said so much as _how_ he'd said it. The stilted words had picked up in a breathy rush of eager interest that could have been taken out of a dozen different cheesy porn videos. He could actually see the mech rewind the sentence and wince over just how crudely that particular point of emphasis could be interpreted.

More incriminating of all was the dull whirr of fans audible in the shamed silence. Despite the awkward wording, Prowl had been working his way up to a polite invitation for exactly what he'd implied. He was practically laying out an invitation to frag, except it seemed to be leaking out in awkward spurts of near-pleading interspersed with roundabout hints.

Time for some bluntness. "Anything, huh?" He grinned. "That's quite an offer. Are you flirting with me, Prowl?"

Hands smoothed flat, his back straightened, and doors angled up and back in factory-perfect posture as Prowl inhaled, fast and hard. His lips pressed into a thin line. He looked mildly upset. Except for the sudden bleaching of his optics, he could have been sitting in a meeting. Business as usual.

Smokescreen leaned back further, sliding his hands out on the berth until he laid back on his elbows.

Tense doors quivered, fanning back on their hinges. Perhaps the meeting topic was unusual.

"This is a bad idea," the gambler said. Thoughtful, he turned one arm in to trace his fingers up his side, watching Prowl watch him. Optics locked on his fingers, and thinned lips went slack. The mech had a good game face, but there were cracks in his poise. A yearning hunger peeked through them. Prowl might want to be chased, but he wanted a lot more than just a chaste courtship. "It is. I haven't even gotten to know you at all. I don't want you to be hurt, and fragging without a good base to start on is going to mess us up. And I think your friends are going to murder me if this is a one-time deal."

The business front went out the window as Prowl dropped even a semblance of distance. He slid to the edge of the chair, somewhat frantic and almost vibrating as his fan rate doubled. His hands opened upward in appeal. "There is precedent for starting a relationship, even if just friendship, via interfacing. You met Wheeljack for the first time in a general meeting, and he took you to his quarters at the end of that shift. You were not friends at the time, but you and he still meet regularly for…activities."

Smokescreen hurriedly pushed up on one arm, jaw working for a long moment. "What - how did you know - " His free hand slapped over his face. Obsessive observation for millions of years. Right. It wouldn't surprise him if the tactician knew the history of every one of his relationships. Even if he didn't, Red Alert probably had everyone's past affairs in teeny-tiny footnotes on the bottom of every personnel file. "We race! And bet on horse racing!"

Prowl's hands lowered slowly, and anxiety tightened the frames around his optics. "Yes, but not every time."

"Oh, for the luck of Primus…look, yes, that's how we met. He's an amazing frag, 10/10, would recommend. But we had no prior interaction! No pressure to meet again, no pressure to turn it into anything more." Smokescreen flapped his hand back and forth between the two of them. "We got - this. Could be fun, yeah, but if something goes wrong, I get officers making my life a living Pit, or you get hurt in the worst way, or **both**. So much can go wrong, okay? It's freaking me out a little."

Prowl looked down. White hands clenched and unclenched. His whole body tensed, pushing up toward a breaking point, and Smokescreen found he was afraid of what would break. He truly, genuinely didn't want anyone to be hurt, much less someone who felt so deeply his doors shook but couldn't show his emotions.

"I do not care if I am hurt later," Prowl said hoarsely. "What happens later will be worth it. I want to interface with you, Smokescreen." He looked up, optics bleached pale, and his voice strained over hope as he said, "Please. Just tell me: do you want me at all?"

This was how bad decisions got made. This. This right here. This was the bad kind of pressure. "You are channeling that lady from _'As The Kitchen Sinks,_'" Smokescreen hedged uneasily. "She said that exact same thing when having an affair with the guy married to her sister. I think that probably means we should take a step back here and cool off. You should, uh, go for a walk. Talk to the other officers. I'm sure they'll tell you to stay away from me." Since they all seemed to doubt his ability to not hurt Prowl's feelings. Frag, _he_ doubted it.

What he really wanted to do was go have a long talk with Optimus Prime. They hadn't talked in the five days since he'd walked out of the Prime's office, and although residual resentment made the idea unpleasant, he wasn't mad anymore. He wanted to talk to his friend more than he wanted to keep the misplaced anger fresh. He could really use some advice. Prowl was putting pressure on him, and Smokescreen didn't know if the thread of interest winding through his engine came from that pressure or because Prowl was kind of hot. The tactician was interesting, but there was a shuttleload of cons to go with the pros. He needed someone to bounce this situation off of.

For a long moment, he thought Prowl would object. The same look of calculation the tactician got during a battle crossed his face, optics narrow and taking in everything for consideration. Scrap, Smokescreen was up against the best tactician on either side of the war. If Prowl had any skill in relationship strategy, he was screwed.

Wait, no. This was not a battle, and he refused to consider it as such.

"Prowl, if you don't get out of my quarters right now, I'm going to leave," Smokescreen said firmly. "Then I'll be sad, because there's been a gauntlet of your buddies hanging around outside waiting for me at the beginning of every shift. They'll get ahold of me, and I'll learn new and horrible ways they can kill me and hide my body if things go wrong." He heaved himself to his feet but kept his tone playful, since Prowl looked seriously alarmed. "Sad and scared to talk to you, Prowl. That's what'll happen. I'll be sad and scared. Also, if I try to leave without waiting for Mirage, SpecOps is going to knock me out and start dragging me around," he added ruefully. The operatives were bound and determined to win this contest against Jazz. "You're going to be responsible for me ending up stuffed in a storage crate somewhere, being sad and scared." Possibly unconscious as well, since Special Operations got ruthless when it came to internal war games.

A frown broke Prowl's concentration. "I will speak with the other officers. Harassment of a fellow Autobot is not acceptable behavior, no matter the reason behind it."

"Pfft, don't spring a leak. Threatening life and limb of a new flame is a time-honored tradition. Shows your friends care about you, mech." He hadn't known Prowl had that many friends until officers had started closing in. Surprise! Start running! "You're just lucky none of my friends will threaten an officer. I'll be fine. Don't get too worried about it."

Except that he kind of wished Prowl would, since Ironhide _meant_ every threat he invented. Jazz could hide a body where it wouldn't be found. Red Alert would conceal their dirty work, too. But Prowl looked thoroughly distracted from the discussion of a moment ago, and therefore Smokescreen would keep his worries under wraps. The point was to distract the tactician and get him out the door.

Prowl shook his head. "It is rude, and we are, as you have said repeatedly, not even friends. I will handle this."

"That means you're going to have talk to them about us," he pointed out right as Prowl started to stand, and the mech managed to trip over his own feet. Grabbing the table for balance, he gave Smokescreen an appalled look. Doors shrugged in return. "Good luck explaining that." It ought to keep him occupied for a while. Maybe the shyness would wear off the more he talked.

Wide blue optics dropped to the hands clamped onto the table. "I…thank you?"

"You're going to need it. I'm sure they'll want to know aaaaall the details."

He added extra relish to that, and horror smacked Prowl right in the chevron. "There are no details," he said too fast, but dread filled his face. He knew better.

"You're talking about Jazz. Red Alert. **Ratchet**. There are always details, and if you don't hand over the details, that means it's a mystery, and they're going to grill you over it until it's not a mystery anymore." He guided Prowl toward the door using a touch to the lightbar across his back. It might have been his imagination, but the tactician seemed to balk. Instead of pushing him forward, Smokescreen patted his lightbar and ignored the bright flashes of red and blue that ran through it. "You'll be fine. I'm sure you can explain to them why you've been staring at me from across rooms for most of the war."

Sirens bleeped before Prowl could choke them off. Oh, to be a spy in the walls when that interrogation went down.

Smokescreen smiled, relentlessly cheerful, and ducked under one black-and-white door to start digging junk out of the door track. He felt 100% better about this, now. Social algorithms were adjusting well, realigning his network of Autobot personal relationships. He could work with this new Prowl. Discovering the whole hidden aspect had been jarring, but okay. Where there had been a wall, a door had opened. Everything from here on out was mapping what had been shut behind it this whole time, and deciding if he had a place in there. As long as this version of Prowl respected his boundaries, he could live with getting to know him.

Prowl watched him gather up the various bits of things that had been crammed in the door track, and his optic ridges lowered. The small signs of nerves vanished behind a professional mask again, leaving the Autobot Second-in-Command, but Smokescreen looked closer. Ah-ha. Concern peeked around the edges of that habitually inscrutable mask. He wondered how long the hints had been there. Had it been there all along and everyone had simply gotten used to seeing emotion grow in plain sight in front of them?

He straightened up, arms full of stuff, and blinked as Prowl stepped close. "What?"

"May I touch you?"

It came out in a crisp voice, the most stone-faced request for intimacy Smokescreen had ever heard. He had to stomp on the urge to laugh in the poor mech's face. That was just...wow. Too cute. Battlefield voice for personal affairs, as said by the universe's most self-conscious officer.

"Like, right now or just in general? Because I'm not sure this is the best time." He had an armful of random junk, for one thing.

Prowl glanced down at it and shook his head. "In general. I do not want to trespass on your personal boundaries. Please inform me if I make you uncomfortable in any way." Anxiety drew the corners of his mouth down. "I do not know what contact you will allow me as someone who is…not your friend."

Smokescreen kept his face carefully neutral. Friendship wasn't a test, or some kind of game level to be achieved. Hopefully Prowl would figure that out on his own soon enough. "How about we just wing it."

The unhappiest of expressions, right there. Prowl the tactician, Prowl who had a plan for every situation, truly did not like this lack of instruction.

Prowl could live with it. Smokescreen played life by the doors on his back, not by a meticulous plan accounting for every variable. He elbowed the access panel and turned to clear the door. "I'll talk to you later, okay?" Pointed hint. Time to get out before he overstayed his welcome.

Optics disappointed, doors sagging, Prowl walked past him into the hall. "Very well. I will - " A heavy hand fell on his shoulder, and his helm whipped to the side. "Prime!"

"Optimus?" Smokescreen tipped sideways to look out the door around Prowl. "Oh, hi. Have you been eavesdropping?"

The revered Autobot leader snorted an undignified sound out his vents. "Your door is soundproof."

"Now, just how would you know that?"

"It is standard construction design for soldier barracks," Prowl said, frowning. He studied the hand on his shoulder like it was a puzzle to be solved. It hadn't let him go even after getting his attention. How odd.

"It is?" their leader asked. "That would explain why I couldn't hear anything." Smokescreen snickered at his mock surprise, while Prowl transferred the frowning to their commander. Cue the guileless optics. Who, him? Listen outside Smokescreen's door? Perish the thought. "Yes, of course. Soundproof doors. I knew that."

"You authorized it. I would hope that you knew about it." Prowl started to turn to address Smokescreen and came up short. The hand on his shoulder hadn't moved. "Did you need something, Prime?" He gave the hand restraining him a pointed look.

Standing somehow taller, Optimus Prime looked far, far down at the shorter mech. He positively loomed over the tactician. Funny, but he hadn't been so intimidating a moment ago. "Yes, actually. It seems that you and I need to have a talk."

Prowl immediately snapped to attention and accessed his schedule, green glyphs scrolling down his HUD. "We are not scheduled for a meeting."

"This isn't anything official," the Prime said mildly. "More of a tradition." Behind Prowl, still half in his room, Smokescreen almost dropped a couple items as he burst out laughing. Prowl turned his head to blink at him, confused, but the hand tightened its grip. He looked back up the Prime. Placid blue optics gazed down at him. Knuckle joints cracked, and Prowl winced. "I heard a rumor about you and my friend."

Prowl's face drained of all expression, optics wide and dim.

Doubling over, Smokescreen lost it, doors bouncing with the force of the laughter rolling up from his gut. Miscellaneous objects dumped to the floor at his feet, and he didn't care. "Optimus - Optimus, y-you're forgiven. Just so you - you know," he gasped through peals of laughter.

His friend gave him a gracious nod, accepting his forgiveness without letting up on Prowl's shoulder in the slightest. "Good to know. Now if you'll excuse us, Prowl and I need to discuss some things in private."

The tactician dug his heels in. "I - Prime, this is not - " He cast a look back at Smokescreen. The laughing fit was winding down, and he rethought his protest. If one mech went through the wringer, perhaps it was only fair that the other did. "Should I start running?"

"I don't know. Can you outrun me?" Their leader's deep voice held a teasing note, but arrogance lurked underneath. Prowl outrunning him just didn't register as a problem.

Two pairs of doors went up: one from alarm and the other from amusement. Metal squealed as Prowl abruptly dropped into altmode, tearing his shoulder loose in his hurry to burn rubber. Sirens whooping and lights on, the black-and-white Datsun zoomed off down the hall, fishtailed around the corner, and was gone. Sirens wailed into the distance.

Surprised, they both stared after him. "That may have been the only time I've seen him break the speed limit indoors," Optimus Prime mused.

Was Prowl playing along or scared to death of facing relationship hazing? Smokescreen didn't know. The tactician _did_ have a sense of humor, but he also got inordinately worked up over private things being brought out into public. Smokescreen had exaggerated the severity of the ritual threats, too. It was entirely possible Prowl assumed Optimus Prime was going to descend on him like a ton of bricks.

For fairness' sake, Smokescreen held up a hand to stop the Prime. "We're not dating," he said.

"I didn't think you were." Mischief shone through the tranquil blue of Optimus Prime's optics for a split second, barely noticeable unless a mech knew what to look for. "Not yet."

He stared up at his friend. Indignation fought to get through a sea of disbelief, but it sank under the weight of amusement. Of all the people to get involved in his love life, it had to be the one who could convince armies to follow his lead. "Are you matchmaking? You?" Strangely, he couldn't wait to hear the reasoning behind this. Optimus Prime: gambler, prankster, and too creative for his own good. Smokescreen trusted him as a leader and friend for more reasons than most soldiers ever saw. The mech's opinion held weight with him. "I didn't know that was one of the Prime's duties."

Broad shoulders shrugged. "It's not. But it is a friend's. Now, if you'll excuse me," a shallow bow, and Optimus Prime flashed those urchin optics again, "I have someone to catch up with."

Big as the Prime was, the mech could move. It took him longer to get up to speed, but Prowl wouldn't be outrunning him for along.

Smokescreen gazed after him, incredulous smile hovering about his lips.

This relationship was off to an _interesting_ start.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**


	4. Pt 4

**Title: ** Playing the Long Odds

**Warning: **Autobots. Awkward. _.

**Rating: ** R

**Continuity: **G1

**Characters: **Autobots, Smokescreen, Prowl

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.

**Motivation (Prompt): **"_." Commission by DisplacedNoble.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**  
**Part Four**

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

"I see fall fashions are the same as spring. How boring," Tracks drawled from across the common room when Prowl strode through the door. Prowl #3, as Prowl #2 had sat down already at the officers' table.

Smokescreen nodded to Bluestreak, who was doing his best Prowl impersonation beside Ratchet. According to Blaster, the one and only original Prowl was off doing a Smokescreen impersonation up on the bridge of the ship, leaving chatterboxing up to Smokescreen. He sincerely hoped it was as confusing for everyone else as it was for him. "Black and white are a timeless combination. It is about time that fashion showed appreciation for the classics." Bouncing a tad on his heels, he headed for the dispenser. "It shows dust pretty easy, I gotta say. Anybody got a polishing cloth? I swear I spend more time wiping myself down than I do talking these days, but I guess that isn't hard. I'm not much of a talker."

Snickering rippled through the room. Bluestreak's doors went up indignantly, and he gave a Prowl-worthy glare as Smokescreen made himself at home over at another table. The gambler gave him a jaunty salute, still in character. Doors flicked up and down. The two Prowls eyed each other a moment more before turning away in a mutual decision to pretend nothing had happened.

The other Autobots shook their heads at the byplay. Internal dynamics of the Prowl flock remained a mystery. Nobody knew if Bluestreak was in on whatever it was Prowl 1.0 and version 3.0 did or did not have going on. Nobody quite knew what was happening at all, in fact, but digging for details had become something of a hobby. Since the authority had been reassembled, however, gossip about it happened under the radar. After all, they were playing a shell game against the Decepticons. The personal lives of Prowl and Prowl 3.0, complicated affair or not, ranked below fooling the 'Cons.

It was a more casual game this time around, but they were out to exploit the Decepticons' new-found wariness toward Prowls. Multiple Prowls loosed on the battlefield had sewn chaos well before Starscream had gone down in the aftermath. Unease kicked in whenever the Decepticons saw copcars, now. They didn't even have to do anything. The Pacific shore state police had stepped up the presence of black-and-whites along coastal roads on Red Alert's rather sadistic suggestion, and Decepticon patrols had been veering off in any direction but shoreward ever since.

Hence the reason the Datsun trio had turned into Prowl doppelgangers a second time. They were playing it loose and easy, tagging each other for personality switches out of whims, boredom, and Prowl's compulsive need to complete any work that showed up in his inbox, but that was enough. Red Alert had tabs on Ravage inside the _Ark_, and Mirage roved the Decepticon base. Both reported an uptick in nervous behavior the moment the authority reappeared. Starscream had recovered, more's the pity, and had six months to get over his near-death experience, but the sheer weirdness had grooved an association between 'aneurysm' and 'too many Prowls' deep into his mind. He was apparently swinging between psychotic, vengeful rage and a case of justified fear.

Wheeljack didn't have anything built, and yet the Decepticons were gearing up for the worst. This was considered a win-win situation in SpecOps terms. Either the Autobots built something to exploit the situation, or the stress would cause its own problems without them needing to lift a finger. Good job, everyone.

"Soooooo. Prowl and Prowl," Cliffjumper said as soon as Smokescreen had settled down. "How's that going?"

Half the table had their optics on Cliffjumper, aghast at his lack of tact, but Smokescreen smiled brightly at the other half. Everybody here itched to ask, and the whole table knew it. The minibot had simply jumped in where the rest of his friends tiptoed. "It's not. We're not into selfcest, and besides, we'd have Portland Zoo knocking on our door if we did."

He'd had six months to invent creative answers to nosy questions. Slingshot played straightmech today, resignation poorly hiding a spark of glee. "Yeah? Whyzat?"

Smokescreen shook his head and tsked. "You ever see us Prowls spar? Looks like penguins rolling down a hill." White hands rolled in illustration. "Black, white, black, white, black, white..." His friends gave him a token groan, and he grinned at Slingshot. The Aerialbot snickered back at him, totally storing the lousy joke to retell to his gestalt later. "Besides, it's a Prowl thing. Not just selfcest and penguin-wrangling," Cliffjumper put his hands over his audios to block out the merciless mental images, and Smokescreen upped his volume, "but the possibility of real danger! You see, if you add a Prowl to a Prowl, what you get is Prowl squared, which would then go on to create a Prowl singularity, and that would be the end of the world as we know it."

"How?" Tracks asked, fascinated despite himself. Plus it was his turn to be the straightmech.

Smokescreen leaned in on his elbow, and the group bent toward him as he lowered his voice as if imparting a great secret. "The Prowl singularity would eliminate all crime and disorder, leaving only organization in our wake as we righted the wrongs of the universe. Superpowers, my mech, superpowers of rules and regulations." Backs slammed into chairs as Autobots retreated, exaggerated horror covering the laughter on their faces, and he nodded solemnly. "Yes, exactly. Imagine that. A world of us. A universe of law and order. You would all join us in the end, yes, becoming one with the authority. Join us. Join ussssss."

Cliffjumper scrambled out of his chair to hide behind it as Smokescreen reached clawed hands for the minibot. "Cut it out!"

"You'll join us someday. You'll become one with us. We are The Prowl. It is inevitable, nay, **logical** to join us." Cliffjumper made a rude gesture indicating where Smokescreen could stuff his logic, and a ripple of laughter went around the table. The gambler heaved a regretful sigh before shaking a fist at the ceiling. "It could happen! Someday! But not now and maybe not ever." His face smoothed to a stoic mask, but his optics were bright blue in amusement. He folded his hands on the table. "Eh. At least not for a while. I'm not convinced it's the best idea to date myself. I'm old enough as it is."

"Yeah, how old's that?"

"Too old to put up with your slag, rookie."

"Hey, don't even start that! I'm young, but I'm twice the mech you - oh fragging Pit I soared right into that one." Slingshot facepalmed so hard his nose crunched a bit, but the roaring laughter only got louder. Bluestreak chose right then to walk up behind him and pat him on the head, a perfect imitation of Prowl's smug barely-there smirk making vents around the table start to whine as fans labored to handle the gut-punch of hilarity. The rookie really had walked headfirst into it.

"Your math is incorrect. You are two-thirds the mech we are," Prowl #2 said, condescending and so utterly correct rust couldn't sting worse on the open burn.

"You're **such** a bastard," Slingshot growled sourly.

Bluestreak and Smokescreen didn't even need Blaster to coordinate this one. "Ah, but I am a third again the bastard you are," they said in stereo, vocalizers tuned to match and already looking identical. Streetwise fell off his chair, he was laughing so hard at Ratchet's exasperated glare at the two of them. Prowl's reputation was never going to recover from them. "Which makes us your superior..?" They paused and waited expectantly.

The corner of the Aerialbot's mouth twitched violently, desperately holding onto a surly scowl despite the giggles escaping between words. "My superior officer. Yessir, Officer Bastard - sir!"

Exit Ratchet, pursued by bees. Also zees, cees, and every other letter in the alphabet, as Bluestreak dove full tilt into chatterbox mode. A swarm of words chased at the medic's heels. He seemed to be searching for a neck to strangle, but Smokescreen had seen the hint of a grin before proprietary had him back to disapproving of the two of them. Laughter rollicked around the common room, and Smokescreen leaned back in his chair, hooking his doors and elbows over the back while he checked Blaster's chart. Prowl had switched back to base personality by default the moment Bluestreak started on one of his infamous babbles, so Smokescreen took his own identity on for the time being. It'd be nice to sit and talk to his buddies as himself, even if they had to be vague about certain things.

Namely that thing between Prowl and other Prowl. The thing that wasn't happening. He'd lost track of how many smart-aft answers he'd given to nosy questions about that thing in the past six months, but it boiled down to the state of their relationship being firmly in the nonexistent category. A lot of mechs had originally assumed that Prime's Talk was the result of Prowl asking Smokescreen out, and both of them had needed to set everyone straight that they, well, they were coworkers. Acquaintances dabbling their feet into friendship, nothing more.

Prowl suffered no fools inquiring into his personal life. His wings twitched up, but he had that perfect mask of non-expression to freeze out busybodies. He had a glare that made it difficult to tell if he felt ire or embarrassment. His voice hit this pitch that dripped icicles, too, and he'd given more than one Autobot freezer burn correcting the rumors. Which he did, without fail and without wasting an excess word on explaining _why_.

That alone made Smokescreen feel a trunkload better about all of this. That, and he enjoyed the baffled, half-frightened looks left in Prowl's wake a little too much. Everyone pestered him for reasons and such, but nobody dared prod the Autobot Second-in-Command for juicy details. Prowl just gave particularly persistent people the same look he'd give a soldier running half-clocked: _of course_ he and Smokescreen weren't dating. They had to get this friendship slag nailed down. Proper procedure, duh.

Prowl's interest in going further was no secret. Prowl wanted Smokescreen. Everyone knew about that, and everybody was curious. It was the natural result of having anything new happen around here. Small and isolated from Cybertron as they were, the _Ark_ crew had gotten used to digging through each other's interiors. Everyone poked their sensors into everything on habit. Gossip passed the time. That, and TV.

They'd gotten to know each other intimately well as a result. There were friendships crisscrossing the crew that would have never sprung up back on Cybertron. Even _Gears_ had friends. Smokescreen counted the whole crew as a buddy club, and the mechs at this table were good friends. He couldn't muster offense at how persistent their questions were. Primus knew he'd gossiped more than his fair share whenever somebody got a new hobby or new beau.

Having busybodies prying into his personal life didn't surprise him. He'd expected that as soon as Prowl's interest in him became obvious.

The surprise had been Optimus Prime towing Prowl into the middle of the common room.

Literally towing, as both of them had been in their altmodes at the time. Optimus Prime hadn't been about to give his Second the chance to use hand-to-hand against him. Instead, he'd pitted altmode against altmode, and a relatively tiny Datsun couldn't stand up to a Peterbilt semitruck. The truck had dragged the much smaller car behind himself in lieu of his trailer, trailer hitch tied to back bumper, but not easily. A heavy-duty engine had roared against tires spinning the opposite direction. The stench of burnt rubber had drifted through the halls, accompanied by distressed, fitful bleats from police sirens.

Prowl had struggled, but he'd been dragged nonetheless. The sirens and squeal of tires had done nothing but draw a larger crowd. They'd assembled at the inevitable end of the parade, finding seats and whispering speculation on what was going on, why their leader had towed Prowl into the common room. Optimus Prime had transformed to unhitch his unwilling cargo, and then he'd waited. They'd all waited.

Peer pressure had mounted until Prowl couldn't take it anymore. He'd transformed most reluctantly, patiently waited out by the Prime and extremely aware that he was doomed. He'd stood up in front of everyone, stiff and painfully dignified. That's when The Talk had begun. According to what everyone said, and everyone had something to say about it, it'd been one of the Prime's famous speeches personalized to an excruciating degree.

Before then, Smokescreen had vaguely wondered how the Powers That Be would handle an officer dating an enlisted mech. Said mech's non-rank outside the official command structure relied on that rank staying unknown. Admitting Smokescreen wasn't a common soldier would out the Autobot's internal spy. The backlash from even _having_ such a rank would shake faith in the Prime at the very least.

The Talk had been Optimus Prime's answer. The officers who already knew about Smokescreen's unique rank knew to keep their mouths shut, but slapping a _'Classified_ _Information'_ label on a relationship here on Earth wouldn't work. The Autobots here were too close-knit, and eventually the secret would leak. Then not only would the fraternization have to be explained, but why it had been kept secret.

Optimus Prime had decided that publicity was the best cover. He'd gone public - but using a cunning bit of misdirection. Smokescreen's position was never mentioned. The focus stayed on Prowl, instead. A special exception for Prowl to date a lower-ranking Autobot had been passed by the Prime, an announcement made in front of everyone. Prowl had gone rigid, optics round, and the common room had exploded into chaos as everyone yelled questions in a rowdy mob.

Those questions had been answered, so upfront and honest that Smokescreen's rank remained out of the spotlight. The focus stayed on the military exception _Prowl_ was issued.

It came with fine print expanded on during the Talk. The Prime himself would be standing up for the lower-ranking mech in this relationship. If Prowl abused his power in the slightest - i.e. treated Smokescreen wrong _in any way_ - it would be Optimus Prime meting out justice on Smokescreen's behalf. He wanted everyone to know that the Autobot Second-in-Command was being permitted to court a soldier, but that rank would not be a factor on either end of the relationship. _Or else_.

Prowl had stood at attention the entirety of the Prime's lecture, doors held straight up and optics glazed in a sort of horror at the sheer publicity. The Autobots had clustered around in a gleeful crowd, and by the time their commander was finished, every off-duty mech in the _Ark_ had gathered to watch. They agreed that the Prime had put the fear of Primus in his Second.

Smokescreen had laughed his vocalizer to glitching when he heard about the speech. Yeah, that was his friend the Prime: trustworthy, noble, and able to scheme with the best of them. Blaster had handed him a copy of the security footage, and he'd gone through it marking every word given double-meaning, every emphasis threatening Prowl as a friend instead of superior officer. No wonder Prowl had looked ready to flee for his life.

The good news was that the fraternization exception had been well-met. Nobody questioned why Smokescreen was the special soldier, because responsibility had been effectively relocated to the officer involved.

All well and good except for the fact that Smokescreen and Prowl weren't dating.

Everyone knew about the Prime's Talk, firsthand witnesses or not. News traveled fast. Everyone immediately rushed to ask Smokescreen about their nonexistent relationship. He kept having to explain that, no, nothing was happening. It'd been awkward at first, kind of funny by the second week, and got slagging annoying by the end of the first month. Six months on, and the questions had tapered off to the occasional irritating attempt to surprise the two of them in Prowl's office. The ambushes mostly caught them seated on either side of the desk, Smokescreen's feet propped up on the other visitor's chair - a compromise from putting them up on the desk, a liberty not even Prowl's affection for the gambler permitted - while discussing Hollywood's latest celebrity scandal.

Yeah, it was a weird interest to hold in common, but Smokescreen liked it. Prowl tracked the drama and politics of Hollywood relationships as an idle, harmless exercise. He enjoyed plotting out the intersection of public relations stunts and genuine personalities. He was continually frustrated when human celebrities acted out of personal feelings instead of through cool-headed strategy to garner the most positive attention from fans. Smokescreen just enjoyed the drama, honestly, but baiting the tactician over failed predictions in who married or divorced whom never got old.

He'd introduced the mech to Earth music and the weirdness growing around music video culture, hoping Prowl would be intrigued by the behind-the-scene politics of music production. Prowl just couldn't get a handle on the human factor while calculating PR campaigns, and Smokescreen couldn't wait to watch him try. Betting against him over musicians would be hilarious, he could tell. Those people seemed to _thrive_ on being right at the edge of failure or success, tipping from one to the other from the power of fickle chance.

It was a thing they did together. Maybe nobody else would think it was exciting, but Smokescreen's friends kept asking about he and Prowl because…well, because he wasn't bored. The return of the trio of Prowls had made blunt inquiries a rarity, but Cliffjumper's nosiness wasn't unexpected. Actually, the blunt question was refreshing. It should have irritated him more, but Smokescreen liked attention. He liked holding the floor with an easy smile and talking about himself. Sure, a relationship that might not ever happen wasn't precisely comfortable to talk about, but his friends were interested in his life, and that kind of lit a warm little glow around his spark.

It was a bit annoying, even tedious, but his friends kept asking because there _was_ progress. He still found Prowl interesting. That interested them.

"I mean, why?" The table huddled inward. Streetwise cast a wary look around the edges of the room as if Decepticon spies would pop out of nowhere, but he shouldered in among the group as Slingshot continued, "Why're you doing it? I get that it's kinda flattering to have somebody that high up chasing your aft, but he's got the personality of a cardboard box."

"Even less," Cliffjumper muttered. "Cardboard's got some give to it. Prowl's got a girder so far up his tailpipe he can't bend over."

Slingshot nodded. "Exactly. Doesn't it bug you that he's gonna be the one busting you if you screw up? He ain't gonna look the other way, nuh-uh. He's hardcore law enforcement. He can't take a joke, he doesn't talk about anything but the regs, and he'll probably arrest you if you look funny at one of his precious rules." He spread his hands to drop invisible cards on the table and rocked back in his chair.

A good gambler knew how to play every hand of cards, however. A truly great gambler knew that the house always won, so applied cheating was a necessary facet to winning. If anything, Slingshot's points were challenge instead of a discouragement. "He doesn't like groups of people," Smokescreen said after giving the room a glance of his own. "You can't blame a mech for that. He's different when there are less people around, and definitely when we're alone. Well," he laughed shortly, "nah, not quite. He relaxes when he knows where my boundaries are. Prime's got him paranoid about knowing what I'm okay with before he accidentally steps over a line somewhere."

As satisfying as it'd been to find out his friend had gone all-out on Prowl, it'd still made Smokescreen feel bad for the tactician. Optimus Prime had really put him through the ringer. It'd been a cruel stunt to pull on someone so horribly shy.

The sympathy died a quick death when Ironhide finally got ahold of Smokescreen two days later and strung him up for target practice for the officers. He'd hung there and unashamedly hollered for help while the officers read him a list of things they'd do if he messed with their friend's feelings. It'd been the scariest version of the Talk he'd ever been given, but it'd also been so over-the-top he'd been laughing too hard to take it seriously half of the time.

Prowl, on the other hand, hadn't found anything funny in a public Talk. He'd avoided being in the same room as Smokescreen unless duty required it for two weeks solid, and he'd kept his optics averted when he did so.

Part of it had been respect, Smokescreen had realized after a while. He'd been given space to think in. Prowl had completely withdrawn from his life, which served to illustrate just how far into Smokescreen's daily routine the mech had inched before being discovered at last. It'd been left to him to decide if he was comfortable enough to initiate anything further.

"You wanted me to stop watching, ah, staring at you," Prowl said when Smokescreen had gone knocking on his office door. The tactician kept his optics on his work. "I…watched you perhaps more than you realized."

Smokescreen thought back over the past two weeks, suddenly conscious of the strange sense of missing something. Huh. How had nobody else noticed before now? Prowl's staring had been under his radar, but there was a lot of empty space in his day. It'd been throwing him off, his map of the _Ark_'s social network abruptly acquiring gaps where the subconscious calculations had long ago adjusted to adding Prowl's distant presence to his interactions. "Uh, thanks. Appreciate it," he said, although he wasn't sure he did.

"No problem," Prowl said softly, still not looking at him.

"Kind of makes it hard to join me off-duty, though," he pointed out, and the tactician's doors flinched downward. Smokescreen felt like a cad, but joining him or not was Prowl's choice. He wasn't going to give up his favorite pastimes for the mech. He was willing to compromise by spending _some_ time in the privacy of Prowl's office, away from curious spectators, but Prowl had to meet him halfway.

Prowl had tried. He really had. Unfortunately, sitting with a group of people he had to maintain a professional distance from didn't make for a sterling reputation among the troops. Invitations to the table Smokescreen ran off-duty earned the stiffest observer in the history of official presences. The players couldn't ignore him, and that didn't help the tactician relax any. The tenser he got, the sterner his expression grew. Having the Second-in-Command of the whole faction giving them that look didn't make for a good game, and the players' tension only made things worse.

Jazz could fool the crew into forgetting he was an enlisted officer by the time he sat down. Ironhide shed official functions like old ammo casings. Wheeljack actively had to remind people he was an officer at all. Blaster didn't pull out rank unless he was actually on the job. Ratchet had the mystical ability to exist in a dual state of respected Chief Medical Officer and mech who could drink half the crew under the table. Even Optimus Prime sometimes joined the common room gatherings, although his participation usually took the form of quiet, warm approval that the crew basked in.

Red Alert and Prowl fell into the category of officers who were their jobs. Neither of them joined any of the activities that sprang up off-duty. Possibly because nobody dared invite them, but more likely because both officers felt it would compromise their authority. Besides, Red Alert got terribly impatient with 'frivolous' hobbies.

Prowl would make a fantastic casino pit boss, in Smokescreen's opinion. That uncanny ability to spot a rule being broken was excellent under the right circumstances. Those circumstances were not in the middle of a friendly game where everybody cheated and the fun part was trying to outwit somebody's new trick.

That left awkwardly sitting there watching everyone else play, but they couldn't get into the game with him supervising. Smokescreen had tried inviting Prowl, and Prowl had accepted a few of the invitations, but the games had turned into mutual staring matches. Both sides had counted the minutes until either the players found excuses to leave or Prowl excused himself.

The tactician had started declining the invitations after a short while. Nobody understood why Smokescreen still kept a chair empty and called out an invitation whenever Prowl passed through the room.

"Just seems weird," Slingshot said now. "Like dating your boss. Weird."

Smokescreen put on his best inscrutable one-of-the-Prowls expression. "We are not dating."

His friends gave him unimpressed looks in return. "You keep saying that, but you keep going to see him. It's sweet, really. Whatever he's like behind closed doors," sly grins all around, and he scoffed at them, "you like it or you wouldn't be going back. I know you, mech." Streetwise shook a finger at him. "You'd get bored and be out of there by now if he wasn't worth staying for."

There was an expectant pause as his friends gave him the opening to spill on what Prowl was like in private. He'd admitted the mech was different once the door was closed, but he'd yet to tell them exactly how. Curiosity nibbled at their tires.

He gave them an arch look. Curiosity could nibble away. He didn't kiss and tell. Or rather, not-kiss and tell. They didn't need to know that Prowl had the universe's driest sense of humor, or that he lit up like a Christmas tree every time Smokescreen walked through his office door. It was nobody's business but his that Prowl had screwed up the courage to invite him to an evening with the tactician's own friends, which would have been an awkward affair if they'd been anywhere but trapped on Earth. Probably two-thirds the officers here knew he was the Prime's mole, but constant exposure had mellowed any resentment to acceptance.

It'd been a nice evening. Smokescreen had trounced Jazz and Ironhide at strip poker (he was never giving back the Ironhide's pistol or Jazz's dashboard hula hoop girl), lost badly at darts (Red Alert could hit _anything_ shaped like Laserbeak), and played too many rounds of a drinking contest called 'Never Have I.' That'd been a mistake. He'd passed out, he'd gotten so overcharged, and woken up groaning from a splitting processor ache. Thus had he learned to never allow Wheeljack to mix his drinks.

None of which he'd be telling his friends about, no matter how often they waited for him to fill in the blanks.

They moved on good-naturedly when he didn't say anything, although Cliffjumper muttered.

"I'd be careful if I were you. If you're in his office much more, he's going to commission you." Tracks snorted his vents, the sound at odds with the genteel way he held his ration cube. Pinkie finger in the air, the pretentious git.

Smokescreen snorted right back at him. "Pfft. As what? Casino Inspection Officer? That's not a job." It would be an awesome job. He wanted that job. He also wanted to steer the conversation away from rank, because he preferred to not lie about being unofficially commissioned. The best lies were the ones that never came up, after all.

Fortunately, he had a bone to throw the pack. "Did you know he watches soaps?"

The table laughed as one, shocked disbelief meeting honest astonishment. "Prowl?" Cliffjumper whooped, forgetting all about grumbling. "You're kidding me!"

"Would I joke?" He gave the minibot a deadpan stare, playing his best Prowl. Prowl, joke about guilty pleasures? Never.

"Got me." The red hellion shrugged and grinned. "What's he watch? _'General Hospital'_?"

"Couldn't get into that one," Streetwise mused. "First Aid starts yelling at the screen every time a TV doctor commits malpractice."

Understandable, as that happened nearly every time a doctor was on screen as far as Smokescreen could tell. "Nope. He likes _'As The Kitchen Sinks'_."

The rest of the common room looked over in bemusement as Autobots burst away from the table. Streetwise went over backward in his chair and somersaulted upright, mouth open and pointing wildly at nothing in particular. Tracks and Cliffjumper circled about in a sort of clumsy, baffled dance like wind-up toys bumping into each other. They narrowly avoided tripping over Slingshot, who was busy sputtering. Prowl #3 stayed seated, of course, stoic as ever. He watched them flail.

The flock zipped back in the way starlings came back to roost. The twittering sounded much the same.

"No way!"

"You've got to be kidding this time!"

"No? Rust me…"

"Never seen him out here watching with us, so why - right, doesn't like groups."

Doors shrugged. "He watches it in his office."

"But **why**?" Slingshot seemed stuck on that question, and he made a frustrated gesture at nothing. "Why does he like it? He doesn't come in here and sit down with us like one of the 'bots, so what's he get from it?" Half the fun of watching the soaps was the yelling the Autobots did at the screen. The overdone drama was so addictive. "You can't say he enjoys humans squishing together and getting knocked up, 'cause…'cause…"

Streetwise elbowed him. "You even know where you're going with that?"

The Aerialbot pushed his elbow away impatiently, regaining his train of thought. "Back off! I just," he hesitated a second, "I just stopped to picture Prowl watching last week's episode, and uh. Kinda broke my mind a little."

The group stopped to think about that. Prowl watching soap operas. That was certainly a mental image.

The Prowl doppelganger in their midst smiled slightly, a bare tilt of his mouth that unsettled them. He looked like the real deal when he did that. "It's almost like he's a normal mech, isn't it?"

Mouths opened. Nothing came out. When they closed, the Autobots they belonged to looked thoughtful.

Because that was the thing they were stuck on. That was why they kept asking Smokescreen why he was giving Prowl a chance. The tactician had a reputation built up over the course of a war, millions of years of cold-sparked professional behavior that had never once cracked. Now there was a crack in the façade, a glimpse into the mech behind the officer, and they had no idea how to reconcile the difference. The Autobot Second-in-Command liked soap operas. That just didn't fit their mental image of him.

_Their_ mental construct, not Prowl as he really was, which was the important distinction. They were bewildered by the discrepancy.

Smokescreen knew the feeling, but he'd gotten an explanation straight from the source. Prowl had a great game face, but underneath it lay someone who could fall in love like anyone else.

The more he got to know the Prowl behind the mask, the more intrigued he found himself. Smokescreen was slowly warming up to him. As a friend, that was; anything more than that would have to wait.

He'd keep his buddies updated, but for now, they needed to change topics. The identity-swap was playing fast and easy this round, but too much grilling on this topic would stand out like a red flag. Not to mention that he was tired of defending Prowl.

However, distracting his friends was as simple as saying, "He made a relationship chart. It's annotated."

Thoughtful looks slid headlong into greed. "For _'As The Kitchen Sinks.'_ He made a relationship chart. Seriously? This is a thing?" Smokescreen nodded, and all other conversation was dropped for this terribly important news. Slingshot stood up and waved his arms vigorously at his team. "Guys! Get over here! Prowl's figured out what the frag's up with Bob and Sheryl!"

"What?!" somebody shrilled, but the stampede had already begun. Frag if Smokescreen could pick out who yelled what in the chaos.

Streetwise had two fingers to an audio as he called his own team in. "Primus. I could use a chart. The men all look the same to me."

"Especially since Bob and Jack are played by the same actor. Mech, I have a mighty need," Cliffjumper said, hands grabbing thin air. Autobots converged on their table from every corner of the common room. "We need this chart. Need."

"Prowl made a chart?"

"Prowl made a chart!"

"Dear holy Primus, my prayers have finally been answered. Thank you for sending us Prowl. Amen."

"He's watched all the episodes and summarized the major plot points in a flow chart, then cross-referenced it by relationships. He's got it on a projector he can expand to cover a whole wall of his office, and it's this Gordian knot of arrows colored by blood relations versus adoptions versus sex hook-ups versus marriage." Smokescreen used the thumb and forefinger of each hand to outline what he meant, squinting through the box at the mechs surrounding him. "It's huge. It's a work of art. It's got the entire time-travel story arc picked out in yellow." He hooked his doors over the back of his chair and shook his head. "You know how many sets of twins and long-lost relatives have turned up in the course of that show?"

Wide optics stared at him from every side. Clearly, no one knew but everybody wanted to. Smokescreen had marked the weekly soap opera hour down as necessary to crew morale a long time ago, something Optimus Prime hadn't understood until he got addicted watching the show himself. He'd started watching during the brain cancer arc where Donna's mother lay in a hospital bed dying for six weeks of episodes and survived through a miracle treatment that Ratchet claimed had no basis in reality. Apparently, Prowl had gotten hooked at about the same time.

Typical of Prowl, the tactician had decided to map out the ridiculous TV series in order to fully understand it. Hence a relationship chart. An insanely detailed, meticulously crafted chart of who had done what with whom, where, and when.

Hands grasped at the _Ark_'s newest object of myth and legend. Cliffjumper whined, "Neeeeeeeeeed."

Smokescreen waved them off. "I'll see if he'll share, but I don't know what good it'll do us. We won't get to watch this week. Anyone else think the patrol schedule's gotten out of control?"

"Augh, someone else noticed! Red Alert's trying to kill us, I swear."

And they were off, well-worn griping given this week's latest twist. Smokescreen sat back and let the crowd complain. This was what he was good at: setting up situations for the Autobots to talk. He found the release valves and let the ranks blow off steam, to rant and get all their thoughts out while he vanished into the background to listen and watch. The colors he wore didn't matter. He had the ability to blend in. His face reflected everyone's expressions, and he made vague noises along with the group, neither agreeing nor disagreeing. His opinion didn't surface as he meandered around listening.

He spied in plain sight. Later, when off-duty mechs went on-duty in the shift change, he'd report what he'd seen and heard to Optimus Prime. That was his job. It's what he did.

He headed back to the common room after midnight. That was also what he did, these days. It was a recent habit, less than three months old. He was finding that he liked the difference from the rest of his day. Duty compelled him to find the busiest areas to listen in, or get even the most withdrawn mech to talk to him. Which was fine, he was an extrovert by nature, but the quiet was a nice change.

After midnight, most of the Autobots were in their quarters in recharge for the night. A skeleton crew patrolled and ran the ship from the bridge, ready in case of emergency, but the Autobots tended to live by humankind's diurnal schedule. The sun went down, and everyone started to get sleepy and languid as their systems wound down.

Well, not everyone. "You're up late again," Smokescreen said, walking over to the only occupied table in the common room.

"Yes." Prowl didn't look up from his datapad. He wouldn't unless Smokescreen initiated a conversation or otherwise indicated it was permissible to do more than exchange pleasantries.

Smokescreen sighed at that as he sat down across from the tactician. Prowl, the original black-and-white, although anyone spying on them would see one mech reflected as if in a mirror. He'd already checked that Red Alert had tabs on Ravage, who seemed to be glaring fixedly at the Prowl-painted Datsun currently snoozing in Prowl's room. It was a good thing Bluestreak didn't talk in his sleep.

"Did you get my request?"

Now that he'd sat down, Prowl looked at him. "I received it. Is there a particular reason you wish to project my work here?" One hand indicated the wall of the common room.

"Yeah. Everyone else wants to see it," the gambler said like that was the obvious answer. It was, but only if one considered his hobby to be of any importance to anyone else. Prowl did not. He categorized nonwork aspects of his life as unimportant and private, and therefore didn't draw it to anyone else's attention.

Puzzling that out had made a lot of sense of what Smokescreen discovered under Prowl's officer veneer. The tactician had a crippling lack of self-worth: if it wasn't categorized as somehow valuable to his job, it was dismissed by his battle computer as a distraction, a negative. He had to fight to hold onto anything outside of work. That blasted battle computer required convoluted logic trees to reluctantly allow Prowl to be anything other than Executive Officer every moment of every day. He relied, quite literally, on outside approval in order to validate anything not automatically approved by the parameters of duty. It made him confident to the point of arrogance within the bounds of duty, but any sign of disapproval over his personal life from the Prime, his peers among the officers, even his friends shriveled him inside his shell.

It'd taken Smokescreen five months to understand how hard it'd been for Prowl to approach him at all. The mech's battle computer made it nearly impossible to initiate anything personal, because doing so might compromise a professional relationship.

Yet here they were, talking. Sort of talking, anyway. Sitting at the same table, at least. Prowl gazed at him, optics blank, obviously attempting to process the idea that anyone would care about his hobby. Smokescreen smiled. The tactician lifted the datapad to hide his face. Hiding behind work was Prowl's default coping method for personal situations he didn't know how to parse.

This was getting old.

Smokescreen stifled another sigh and reached over to tap at the top of the datapad held between them. The tap had some pressure behind it, but he wouldn't force the mech to put it down. "It's okay. I told you before, I don't mind you looking at me." It was the staring that had freaked him out, but that had stopped months ago.

Prowl's optics peered up from under his helm before he quickly ducked his head back down. "I know. I simply find it difficult to talk with you while looking at you. I - a buffer makes it easier." His doors pulled in close and tight, and a burble of laughter started somewhere around Smokescreen's engine when the words rushed out in a hurried mumble. "You are very pretty."

"Um. Yeah. Thanks." Smokescreen's own doors pulled in tight for a second. There it was.

Prowl's inability to put physical attraction into words was far too cute. The mech inevitably defaulted to that one phrase, hiding behind its shelter in flustered embarrassment, and it did convey just how infatuated Prowl was. A flush of flattered pleasure ran through Smokescreen's lines at the praise, every single time. Prowl so obviously _meant_ it.

He didn't know how to brush off compliments delivered in absolute certainty. He knew how to laugh at over-the-top praise or backhanded compliments. Accepting sincere, earnest statements hadn't come up often enough to learn how to accept them smoothly. He'd never had someone who genuinely tripped over himself trying to catch his attention, or who fidgeted nervously when he got it. The last person he'd dated had been a suave, sophisticated trader full of demands and flattery that oozed, it piled on so deep. He'd liked it at the time. After the break-up, he'd realized how much that flattery sugar-coated demands tricking him into doing what he truly didn't want to.

Prowl didn't demand anything of him in return for the praise. No changes, no criticisms, no attempts to manipulate him. The only thing Smokescreen needed from his friends was honesty, and Prowl honestly found him very, very pretty. The praise showered on the gambler in awkward bursts, and it warmed his spark because Prowl wanted to communicate, he wanted to say more, but this was the best the tactician could manage. Pushing words that might be judged as wrong past the criticism of a battle computer had the mech twisted up inside - so. Pretty. Prowl thought Smokescreen was pretty, because he had analyzed that phrase down to fact. It was the one thing he could say in utter certainty, so he did.

In his office, out on the racetrack, here in the common room after midnight, away from watching subordinates, Prowl had a vulnerability to him that made Smokescreen want to help him. A crisp, clear line delineated where the Autobot Second-in-Command's orders ended and Prowl began, and Smokescreen had found himself seeking the company of the latter where he'd never sought the former. The tactician kept looking for boundaries, for rules for their friendship he could feed his battle computer, and Smokescreen could provide those. His ability to map out social networks meant he understood the underlying rules for how interactions played out. Everything could be turned into a game through his optics.

He could gamble, calculating risks and taking chances. Prowl needed more information to play a bet than he did. Befriending him was a lot like introducing a cautious, almost timid new player to the table.

Smokescreen smiled to himself, but a tinge of weariness colored it less than happy. He'd been spending a lot of time 'introducing' Prowl to his game. A mech could only think about someone else for so long before admitting there was interest there. He'd fragged mechs who weren't his friends yet, so maybe. Maybe, if they took this slow and careful, he could make this work. .

It was the fact he kept finding reasons _not_ to that made him think he couldn't.

Smokescreen needed honesty from his friends. That meant he had to be honest in return.

Even if it meant letting someone's hopes down. Even if it meant breaking a spark looking for love, because striving for something that wasn't there would poison what really was there.

"Look…Prowl…" Bringing this up hurt, it took so much effort. Smokescreen rubbed his chevron, avoiding the artificial pieces under the paint. "We've got to talk."

The hands on the datapad clenched in a brief, unhappy motion that betrayed Prowl even before shadowed blue optics rose to look at the gambler. "Yes. We do."

They looked at each other, identical faces etched in sadness by their own reasons, identical doors slowly drooping, and a tiny smile trembled on one pair of lips. No one who knew Prowl the officer would recognize it, but it was so uniquely Prowl that Smokescreen could never imitate it. "If this is where you give me the _'Let Us Be Friends'_ speech," the tactician said low and painfully humble, "I would like to say thank you for giving me that much. If…you think we can be considered friends?"

Oh, Primus. That glimmer of hope amidst the grief squeezed his spark in a vise. Smokescreen had to cough his vocalizer into activation. "Yeah, Prowl. Yeah, I think we can be friends."

The glimmer turned into a deluge of relief, like Smokescreen had opened a floodgate in Prowl's mind. Doors sagged, and the smile disappeared for a moment before attempting to return. "Thank you. I - thank you. I have been attempting to find a way to," one white hand made a gesture encompassing the two of them, "bring this up. It is - you and I - " He stopped, optics down. The frantic whirl of his thoughts made those optics flash between a dark navy and a brilliant cerulean blue.

Prowl swallowed, taming his ragged venting down to a steady, deep pattern. "I came to the realization that becoming your friend with the sole intention of becoming something more reduces your friendship to a gate, a rite of passage or purchase of a ticket instead of - instead of dedicating myself to caring for you as an actual friend." Smokescreen must have done something to give away his thoughts, because Prowl winced. "You knew. You knew that I - no, do not explain," he interrupted the gambler before anything could be said. "It is not your responsibility to teach me. You owe me nothing, and I am sorry for - for approaching you this way. Nothing has gone as I intended."

"I've always been the wild card," Smokescreen said, staying neutral. This was going better than he expected, and somehow that made it worse.

Worse because Prowl understood, and his battle computer punished his understanding by interpreting it as failure. Anxiety made his knuckle joints creak and his optics avoid Smokescreen's. "Yes. I have always had difficulty predicting you. I suppose it is part of why I - nevermind." He sucked in a breath and let it out in a shudder of fans and vent covers. "I apologize for my blindness. I was wrong, and I am sorry. I am grateful that we can be friends despite - "

"No." White hands reached out to pry white hands off the datapad and grasp them in a firm hold, and Smokescreen leaned forward to force Prowl to look at him. "Mech, I think we're friends **because** you figured it out."

White-on-white, their hands held tight as the silence stretched out.

Prowl reset his vocalizer. "That is it? We are friends?" His lips turned down, and he seemed a bit confounded. "Is entering a 'friendzone' as simple as that?"

A snort of laughter broke some of the tension. He'd never get used to Prowl's interpretation of relationship terms. The tactician had a way of only seeing the positive part of things with bad connotations. "Didn't think it was simple, but sure. Respect is kinda like that. Makes it a lot easier to sort out how to treat other people, y'know? I respect your feelings, you respect mine, and hey, we can get along."

"I see." One set of hands slowly let go, withdrawing reluctantly. "Thank you. I have never had many friends, and - most of my predictions for this conversation ended with anger on your part. I had not hoped you would wish to continue." He forced a weak smile. "This conversation went far better than anticipated."

"It really did," Smokescreen agreed, and Prowl stared at him. "What? I was nervous, too."

"You…were? I - I am not doubting you, I just - you are - "

"Frag if I could predict what you'd do, either. I didn't want to lose a friend."

That got a startled blink. "…oh. I did not think of it that way." Prowl's doors flinched down. "That was rather self-centered of me."

Smokescreen shrugged, neither comforting nor condemning him. Piling guilt on a friend served no purpose, but neither did excusing him.

They sat together, lost in their own thoughts for a couple minutes before the gambler sat upright and slapped his hands on the table. "Right. Well, this'll be fun to explain to people."

"Do we have to explain anything?" Prowl glanced at the door like Optimus Prime would appear out of nowhere. "This is a mutual decision. No one is to blame. Frankly, it is none of their business."

Of course it wasn't. Exactly.

Except that their friends were slightly overprotective, and overprotective friends weren't to be trifled with.

Smokescreen gave the door a wary look of his own. Knowing his luck, Red Alert and Blaster were probably already spreading the word. Best to distribute accurate information before they suffered the consequences of misinformation flying around reaching the wrong audios. "How about you tell Ironhide and Jazz, and I'll tell Optimus. Okay?"

"Okay."

They sat there another minute.

"…you go first."

* * *

**[* * * * *]**


	5. Pt 5

**Title: ** Playing the Long Odds

**Warning: **READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. Autobots. Awkward. _.

**Rating: ** R

**Continuity: **G1

**Characters: **Autobots, Smokescreen, Prowl

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.

**Motivation (Prompt): **"_." Commission by DisplacedNoble.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

**Part Five**

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

"It's been ten years."

Prowl didn't look up from editing Sheryl's relationship arrows. "Eight and a half, not ten. Without counting the dream sequences, she has only been married to Bob for approximately six years."

Smokescreen put his elbows on the desk and rested his chin on a hand. "Blaster says the near-death experience had a time frame of four years total because of the age of their kids in the dream." An uncomplimentary mutter gave Prowl's opinion on Blaster's analysis of everybody's favorite episode, and he grinned affectionately at his friend. Prowl hated when other people messed with his headcanons. "Yeah, I know, but he's right that the kids were older." Doors went down. More muttering, and Prowl stabbed the keys of the console viciously. He'd start arguing technical points any minute now if Smokescreen didn't derail him. "Anyway, I wasn't talking about the soaps."

"No?"

"Nope. I was talking about us."

Blue optics finally looked away from the screen, and Prowl blinked at him. "Us?" Argument successfully derailed! Now onto serious business.

More serious. Serious-er business. Soap opera discussions were fairly serious pastimes among the Autobots, but Smokescreen had been putting this conversation off for long enough. He'd decided today marked a significant anniversary of sorts, which was enough of an excuse to lay off the brakes and just say what he'd been thinking for a while now. "Ten years since you asked me out on a date and I turned you down. I'd kind of thought you'd remember."

Prowl reset his optics before lowering them to his hands. They'd gone still on the keyboard. "I do. I did not think it something worth bringing up." Fingers tapped until he stopped the restless motion. "Ten years is a short amount of time."

For their species, it really was. Smokescreen had run missions that'd taken ten Earth years or more to complete. Still, the time hadn't flown by. Even thinking back on it, it seemed like the summers lasted forever and every snowfall in winter could be clearly remembered. "Is it just me, or has it felt like longer?"

Prowl flipped the console screen into powersave mode, turning his full attention to the conversation as he frowned. "Time is not an arbitrary measurement. It cannot 'feel' longer or shorter. It simply is, as defined by the measurement placed on it."

Ten years ago, Prowl wouldn't have ended it there. Ten years ago, Smokescreen would have taken that as an answer and moved on. Now, however, the tactician paused to let his thoughts work through his battle computer to test the idea, and across the desk, the other Datsun patiently waited.

Waiting that paid off when Prowl's frown lightened to a more thoughtful look. "There is more memory tagged for long-term archiving in my files than in the period prior to our arrival on Earth. The amount of experiences remembered does give the past ten years more weight."

One finger went up. "Ah, but did the time go by fast or slow?"

Prowl narrowed his optics at him. "Time went by at the same rate." Smokescreen waited, grinning unrepentantly, and his friend eventually conceded, "Perhaps my recollection of it plays a trick on my mind. It seems to have passed slower." The gambler marked an invisible point in the air, and a smile tugged at one corner of Prowl's mout, although his face otherwise didn't show amusement. "Strange. Earth's lifeforms change quickly compared to us, but I remember the changes clearly. Keeping a larger percentage of memories creates the illusion that time stretches out."

"That's not as strange as you'd think. Cliffjumper's memory mods are based on Red Alert's. He remembers **everything**, and he's always claimed monitor duty lasts forever." Shrugging, Smokescreen sat back in his chair.

White fingers drummed once against the desk, and Prowl hummed a noncommittal agreement. Smokescreen could all but see the wheels turning in his head. The urge grew to hint some more to hurry him along, but the gambler's immature streak won out. The reaction to this was going to be gold, he could tell, and he wanted Prowl to walk right into it.

He refused to think that the reaction would be bad. It could be, he knew that. It very well might be, but he'd gradually hyped himself up over broaching the topic. Six months of anticipation wouldn't be beaten down by apprehension.

Finally, curiosity won. Prowl just had to ask, "Why did you mention it has been ten years?"

Ten years of building a friendship. Ten years of knitting together bits of time passing in the halls, stopping for a minute or two to talk in the common room, and gossiping about celebrities while driving somewhere. Ten years of Prowl inviting him to his office to talk while he worked, and Smokescreen putting reruns on the big TV in the common room for them to watch together after midnight. Ten years of groaning over MTV.

Ten years to decide he liked Prowl as maybe more than a friend. "You asked me out on a date, way back when. I just, y'know," he hooked his elbows over the back of the chair, too casual for the bright smile he wore, "wanted to see if the offer's still open."

The words went in one audio and out the other, scrambling the brain module in between on their way through. Hands jerked on the desk, doors shot straight upright, and Prowl's head twitched slightly to the side. Yet his voice remained perfectly calm. "_Fzzt?_"

Calm, but incoherent. A crackle of static came out in place of actual words. Smokescreen politely pretended he understood, because Prowl was already starting to freeze up, fans burring loudly as panic hit. The mech didn't need to be embarrassed on top of flustered.

"No, I'm being serious. I've been thinking about you and I," Smokescreen waved a hand between them, "and we're friends. I mean, I think we are, and I think maybe we could take it further. I'd be down to frag," he pasted on a playful leer that made Prowl shrink in his chair, optics comically startled, "but I know it's not your thing. Casual 'facing's fun with a friend, and I thought about that, too, so if you want a no-strings-attached 'face - hey, that's great, I'm up for that, but, er. You still want to try dating? I figure if I'm attracted to you enough to wanna berth you, I might as well give a relationship a try." The thought of a romantic relationship hadn't killed the urge to ogle Prowl's aft, and he'd thought plenty hard on both subjects. That aft was mighty fine, and his spark gave a funny fillip every time he thought about looking at Prowl the way Hoist looked at Grapple. That was a neon sign of how interested he was, as far as Smokescreen was concerned.

An internal one, so his interest needed to be spelled out for those who couldn't read minds. He cocked his head to the side and pasted on a winning smile.

"_Zzrt. Freeeettzzrr._" Doors flinching down at the harsh crackle of static, Prowl reset his vocalizer. "C-come again?" he asked, strained and unable to believe what he'd heard.

"Do you want to go on a date? Like an actually dating kind of date. Holding hands and snuggling kind of date." Wide blue optics boggled, and his smile turned less dazzling and more affectionate. "Because you said you're not into friends with benefits, and I'd kinda like to frag you."

"Meep."

That could have been an attempt to speak, but Prowl just sat there when he waited for more. After a moment, the gambler turned his hands up. "I want to frag you, but not if it makes you uncomfortable. If a relationship's what you want, I'm game." He ducked his head and grinned, feeling bashful. For Primus' sake, this wasn't his first time admitting his fuel pump skipped. He ordered himself to pull it together. "Besides, I think I like you and I'd like to find out if I **like**-like you, so…seems like a good idea. Either we find out we're not into each other and don't frag, or we upgrade to going at it like petrorabbits."

That mental image knocked the breath out of Prowl. Vents wheezed audibly, and his vocalizer weebled a squeaky, "_Mweeeeeeep._"

"Only real worry I've got is whether or not this'll mess up us being friends." Smokescreen held his opened hands toward the other mech. Worrying, right? That was something to be concerned about?

Blue optics flickered erratically, but the black-and-white mech managed a nod. Yes, worrying. Messing up ten years of building a friendship would be bad.

"Okay, so that's why I'm asking. Is the invitation still open, or did we pass the expiration date?" Smokescreen dropped the casual pose in favor of putting his hands flat on the desk and leaning forward. Look, the cards were down. No games here. "I'm leaving it up to you. Not going to lie, I'd like a 'yes,' but it's not a big deal if you say 'no.' I've got you as a bud, and that's good. I'm happy with that. But I'm opening the floor to talking about us being more." His fingers spread apart.

It was up to Prowl to make the decision on that. Going official wasn't his first choice - he'd rather have tested the waters with some flirting - but Prowl preferred to keep his social network within set boundaries. They were friends now, and Smokescreen would rather announce his intentions than confuse the tactician. Open communication was a go. Prowl had originally wanted a relationship, but Smokescreen didn't know if he still did. Outright asking wasn't a bad strategy for finding out. Slightly jarring, but Prowl would live.

"I - " The tactician coughed through reset. "This is sudden."

"I told you: ten years. Today seemed like a good idea."

Prowl stared at him for a second before tearing his optics away. "Commitment is out of character for you. Are you - have you fully thought this through?" The desk was suddenly in urgent need of organizing, and Prowl set to it with a will. "You enjoy interfacing with others. There is little benefit in giving up that freedom for...me."

Primus fragging Hephaestus, he'd forgotten about Prowl's outdated ideas on how relationships worked. "You going to dictate who I can and can't clang?" Three datapads and a decorative wire bird fell on the floor as Prowl fumbled badly, and Smokescreen sighed. "I'm not saying being exclusive's going to be a problem if that's what you really want, but it's kind of a gearstick move dictating terms at me. You're assuming I'll give up fragging my friends. Did you even think about asking me? Dating somebody doesn't mean you own their interface array. If dating goes well, the interfacing's fun and all, maybe we should talk about making that into one of the benefits **of** dating. I'm always up for a threesome."

Sirens bleated.

A moment later, after things stopped rolling around, he got up to help pick up everything that'd been knocked to the floor. So much for composure. Prowl's doors had flicked out like they were spring-loading, sweeping half the desktop clear. His vents clicked and clattered the second Smokescreen knelt beside his chair, and the tactician promptly dropped the sheaf of human-sized letters he'd just picked up. Paper went everywhere.

Stricken optics stared down at him. "I - I do not - you are - this is not - "

"Let me help." Since he wasn't getting anything done on his own. Every time Smokescreen's hands got remotely near his own, Prowl snatched them back to hover uselessly above the mess. His fingers flexed, paralyzed by conflicting urges. Smokescreen gathered up the bits and pieces and set them on the desk, this time away from the edge and any further startled motions on Prowl's part.

Once he finished stacking the mail, he sat back on his heels and looked up at the tactician. The desk became immensely interesting. Prowl studied it. "I'm guessing that a threesome is out." The mech's mouth moved, but nothing came out. Smokescreen shook his head. "That's okay. Are you absolutely against sharing me with anyone else, whether or not you're there?" More silent words, although these seemed to be half-formed, sputtered things with no voice behind them. Prowl's vocalizer had shut down out of self-defense. "Right. Is that a yes, no, or talk about it later?"

Prowl shook his head. Then he nodded. He stopped, head wobbling on his neck before he turned his face away. His optics were so wide and bright they reflected dully off the opposite wall.

Smokescreen blew out stale air. He'd freaked the poor guy out, obviously, and they were getting way ahead of themselves. No talk of threesomes or staying exclusive until Prowl decided whether they should even attempt dating. Boundaries were good, but the discussion could wait until they had something to talk about. "Later it is. Maybe. If you think a date's a good idea."

White noise blurted softly before Prowl could get his vocalizer to cooperate. He took shelter in technicalities. "You...are no longer in that category for me. I reset the parameters of my battle computer to eliminate you from my options for potential romantic partners. In order to, ah, revise our," he hesitated, searching for tactful wording, "relationship status, I would have to edit the parameters again and let my battle computer process the changes."

"You don't have to if you don't want to." Drawing one knee up, Smokescreen set his arm across it. He stayed on the floor. Submissive body language could take some of the pressure off Prowl, and he could do that much.

A scratch on the desk required attention. Prowl rubbed a thumb over it and avoided Smokescreen's gaze. "It is not that simple. Recategorizing you distanced me from inappropriate feelings for you. I am uncertain as to the state of my underlying emotions as pertaining to a change of this magnitude. It is possible that attempting to revise our relationship will lead my battle computer to classify you as a threat to my position."

"What? Why?"

Tensed doors were tucking down, subsiding from shocked to unhappy. "It has taken a great deal of convoluted reasoning to come to terms with the social aspects of being your friend. Knowing the consequences of more could trigger defensive protocols if I edit your profile. I had - more time. The last time your profile changed, I had more time to develop my…ah, feelings for you. I reasoned my way around the limitations of my battle computer. That may not be an option if I change it again."

Smokescreen splayed one hand and grimaced his understanding of that. The difference between sneaking up on a conclusion from behind or already knowing the consequences of a decision could make the difference when passing the choice by Prowl's unforgiving tactical mods. They'd had to learn how to be friends despite those mods' interference. Smokescreen didn't think they had any setting but _'threat'_ and _'potential threat'_ for people. Which, to be fair, the mechs in Prowl's life usually fell into either category. The Autobots who'd survived the war were dangerous people even when they were nice. That made it really hard for Prowl to make new friends, however, or keep the ones he had.

They weren't huge huggy happy best friends getting in everybody's faces or anything, but their friendship did affect their everyday interactions. Slag, everybody noticed when an officer as stoic as Prowl smiled, and Smokescreen made him smile. The gambler liked to slyly interject humor where Prowl didn't expect it, and getting a real laugh out of the aloof mech made Smokescreen inordinately happy. Prowl had had an entire war to get used to Jazz's sense of humor. Smokescreen's wisecracks still took him off guard.

They were professionals and handled their on-duty behavior as professionals, but there would always be those Autobots who pushed any perceived opening. An officer and soldier being friends had been that opening, at least early on. Prowl had loosened up a fraction around Smokescreen, and some people had thought everybody could suddenly act all buddy-buddy with him.

With the Second-in-Command of the entire Autobot faction.

That hadn't gone over so well.

There had been surplus labor for the scutwork shift for a while, there. Smokescreen had taken aside a couple mechs on his own to tell them to knock off the disrespect, and Optimus Prime had come down like a ton of bricks on Air Raid when that had gone too far. Prowl had been livid and confused at the same time. Compromising between the stiff front of Executive OfFicer and Prowl the mech had created difficulties. Itcaused awkwardness among the troops, and shifting to romance instead of friendship might start more trouble.

Blind optimism withered before ten years of reality. They'd had a hard enough time patching up the minor fall-out's they'd had over more trivial things. Betting their friendship on hopes of more could lose them everything.

"It's a risk," Smokescreen said quietly. "We don't have to take it."

Conflicted blue optics turned toward him. "We **should** not."

"Okay. That's fine." He shrugged instant agreement. "Conversation over."

It wasn't what he'd hoped for, but if Prowl didn't want to sort out the can of worms they'd open by dating, then it wasn't his place to press for more. Hey, he could get laid by half the _Ark_, or his own hand if he got desperate. Every mech had needs. He'd been acting on emotional ones this time, that was all. It hadn't paid off.

Ah, well. A date wouldn't happen. He still had a good friend, and that was fine. Although now his feelings were stinging from the rejection, and he was mildly surprised to realize his pride wasn't the only thing smarting. Huh. He'd invested more into the idea of dating than he'd thought.

Still, that didn't change anything. Getting his hopes up hurt, but he'd get over it.

It did hurt right now, however, and he needed some space to process. "Look, I'm going to go for a drive - "

"Would you take the risk?" Prowl interrupted him. The tactician still stared at the desk in front of him, but his doors had gone back up. "I should not. I know that. However, would **you** take the risk if it were up to you?"

He'd been climbing to his feet, but Smokescreen stopped to blink at him. "Me?" He could tell Prowl wanted to pass the decision to him. Smokescreen's ability to act against the calculated odds on a hunch wasn't something Prowl could do, but the tactician could follow his lead.

He wanted to say 'yes' and provide the external boost Prowl's tactical mods needed to bypass stark facts, but honesty cracked him upside the head. Honesty, not manipulation. This wasn't one of his friendships among the Autobot ranks where he sometimes had to put duty above honesty in order to further the Prime's will. He'd have to live with the responsibility for the lie itself, and then he'd end up telling Optimus Prime about it later. Every bolt in his body tightened in pre-emptive shame at the mere thought.

No lies, only honesty. He summoned a trademark easy smile. "Nah, I wouldn't date me if I were you."

Doors sank. "You…I see. Then there would be no point in trying."

"Nope." Much as he wished there was.

He couldn't quite tell what that expression meant. Prowl looked lost, optic ridges furrowed and optics a dark navy. His hands slid off the desk to lay limp in his lap as he frowned down at the desk, but the frown had no disapproval behind it. Frowning was a default mask, automatic cover for the thoughts racing behind it, and Smokescreen couldn't read what those thoughts were.

Knowing Prowl and his insecurities, it was likely worry over whether this would affect their friendship, so he reached over the desk to grip one shoulder. "Relax, I'm just going for a drive. Nothing's changed, mech. **Nothing**, I promise." He wouldn't let hurt feelings over an imaginary date spoil what he already had. Even if he felt a little awkward, Smokescreen could act fine for one night until the sting faded. He let go and bumped Prowl's shoulder with a fist, projecting reassurance as hard as he could. "We're on for tonight, right?"

Prowl glanced up at him and away. "Yes. I will be there."

It didn't ring true to him. Heading for the door, it niggled at him until he paused before keying the door open. "Look, I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I know I kinda sprang this on you. You want me to stay away for a couple days?"

"**No!**"

"Whoa, hey!" Hands up, Smokescreen backed into the door and blinked a couple times.

Embarrassment blazed bright in Prowl's optics. He plopped down into his seat again with a distinct lack of grace. "I - apologize, that did not come out as intended. I meant to say that is not necessary. Unless you would prefer to stay away?"

"I'll stay away if you want me to stay away."

"I would like you to do whatever makes you most comfortable."

"I'm trying to make **you** comfortable, Prowl."

"I am fine."

"You're sure you're okay with tonight? I can invite some people if you need a buffer. Blaster's always up for skeezy celebrity shows."

Prowl shook his head, frowning. "That is not necessary. I am fine. Merely - surprised. I would like some time to think about…" He trailed off, mouth open but unable to find the words he wanted. His mouth snapped shut into a thin line before he found the right thing to say. "Options. This is not a trivial decision. Ah - unless you wish me to drop the topic?"

"I don't know. Are you thinking about options because you want to or because you think I want you to? Because we're good like this. I'm good. Are you good?"

"I am fine. It is a - that is to say, I would like to explore the idea of changing our relationship status in…in theory only. It is an option I have not thought on in ten years, and it will take some time to process."

Smokescreen's hands went up in useless defense as unease squeezed his spark. Aw, slag, he'd really screwed this up. "You really don't need to do that. I'm sorry. Frag, I didn't mean to upset your tactical database. Can you delete the whole line of thought? It's not an option. Forget I mentioned it. Er, yeah, you can't really do that, but- fragging Pit, I'm sorry. Really, I am. I didn't want to make things weird. We're friends, it's great, can't we…can't we just go on like before?" A terrible sinking sensation took the bottom right out of his tanks, and his fingers curled back into his palms. The look on Prowl's face made dread thicken his voice. "Primus, I - look, I'll just go, okay? I'll wait for you tonight, but if you don't want to come, I understand. I get it. I'm sorry. This was so stupid of me, and I should have just kept my vocalizer off."

His doors hit the door, and one hand went back to poke at the access panel. He had screwed up _so bad._ He was so used to being part of a close-knit group where sexual attraction to a friend could naturally spill over into a frag or five. Being upset by a friend seeing him that way hadn't been a problem. It left Smokescreen floundering for how to fix this.

Helpless fear plastered across his face, and another babbled apology overrode whatever it was Prowl tried to say as the gambler scurried out of the office, chevron clipped short. The door shut on a last "Sorry!" and a dumbstruck look from the mech sitting behind the desk.

"Scrap. Scrap. Scrap!" Pressing the heel of his hand to his helm, Smokescreen took off down the hall. Part of him wanted to drive away fast like that'd leave this all behind, but that never worked. Instead, he went for the Prime's office.

Where he fidgeted in the visitor's chair for twenty minutes, silenced by Optimus Prime's Serious Business Face. He wasn't the only one in need of advice today. The President was on the line, and that call took precedence. Smokescreen knew that. He also knew that when the boss shoved a datapad across the desk and stabbed a finger at it out of sight of the camera pick-up, the fidgeting had gotten on his nerves. He had a surplus of nervous energy that came out in crossing and recrossing his legs every minute, and that distracted the Prime from more important things.

Smokescreen settled down to write out everything that'd happened. Writing it out served to really spell out how stupid he'd been, however, and he hunched progressively lower in the chair the more he wrote. He was such an idiot. Such. An. Idiot. Why couldn't he travel back in time and not open his stupid mouth? Why? Couldn't Primus grant one teensy favor? He'd be good. He'd stop playing Truth or Dare with Sideswipe and making him confess his contraband business as a truth.

Primus didn't heed his prayers. Time travel didn't happen. Big fingers had to lift his face off the desk off the desk to get at the datapad once the call with the President finished. The gambler whined and burrowed his face further into the screen.

"That bad?" Optimus Prime asked. Amusement fought sympathy in his voice.

A miserable groan answered him. He shook his head and tugged the device free, and Smokescreen's chevron smacked into the desk when he let go of the gambler's head. He looked at his friend, taking in the lowered doors and arms hanging straight down to the floor. Apparently it _was_ that bad. He settled in to read.

Smokescreen wallowed in his misery for a couple minutes more, waiting for condemnation. He kept his optics offline. Memory of Prowl's office replayed against the blank visual feed, and nothing he did changed it. He tweaked, scripted, and replayed it over and over. It didn't help. The biggest mistake had been saying anything in the first place.

If this ruined things between him and Prowl, he didn't know what he'd do. Be a puddle of moping for a while, probably.

And out of everything spilled onto the datapad, what Optimus Prime got was, "So you **do** like Prowl."

Oh, come _on_. Where was the comforting in his hour of need? Smokescreen rolled his head to the side enough to give his friend the evil optic. "Why is that news?"

Happy blue optics peered over the datapad of sparkfelt sorrow to crinkle at him in amusement. "You know what I meant."

Yeah, he did, but nobody said he had to be mature about it. "Whatever. I don't **like**-like him. I just think I **might**. Might have. Won't, now, because - "

"You realize he wanted you to say he should go out with you, yes?"

The distressed engine grumblings that had been underlining everything he did stopped dead. "Uh."

"He asked you because he worries excessively about overstepping your boundaries. The way you originally asked put the responsibility for deciding on his shoulders, and he's afraid that what he wants carries too much weight. He doesn't want to put pressure on you." Optimus Prime propped his chin on one hand and shook his head at the gambler sitting slack-jawed across the desk from him. "You're so worried you're putting pressure on him that it went right over your head how he's trying to defer the decision onto you because he doesn't want to somehow direct you into a relationship. You're both playing so cautious neither of you is willing to make the first move." Smokescreen nodded numbly, optics dim as he rewound his memories to look at them through that perspective, and the larger Autobot chuckled.

Of course it took an outsider to see how these two danced around each other. Looked like Optimus had won the betting pool. Although he miiiiiiight have cheated. Just a bit. Or a lot. He hadn't tried to matchmake the two of them past that initial blessing on Prowl's courtship, but the big mech had been Smokescreen's sounding board for ten years. He'd listened. He'd heard how the casual talk had taken a more serious bent. The little things had added up, words and phrases and the look in the gambler's optics, and time mattered, too. Smokescreen had been spending more time in Prowl's company than he likely thought about. Optimus Prime had noticed.

Besides, he had his little birdies, yes he did. Smokescreen was the unofficial spy in the ranks, but the officers who were friends with Prowl had been in on the betting pool since the beginning. Red Alert and Blaster had been keeping tabs on the Prowl-Smokescreen friendship. Optimus Prime didn't tend to speak up when meetings derailed into gossip, but he listened.

It'd been a hotly debated topic whether anyone should say something about the sexual tension those two had begun radiating. The problem had been that nobody knew if it was their imaginations getting away from them or actual interest growing between two close friends. Because it could have been imagination. Prowl and Smokescreen standing side-by-side made the Jazz kink in the ranks look like a passing fad. Optimus Prime had kept his vocalizer off on any hints Smokescreen might have dropped one way or another.

It'd paid off. He'd collect his winnings later, after the drama was resolved.

The intercom on the desk beeped right then, and he wished duty didn't compel him to answer the call. Recent events were hitting Smokescreen in the head, and his optics were getting big. The dazed look said that he didn't know how to deal with the revelations smacking him upside the cortex. Optimus Prime would rather sit and talk with him than talk to world leaders.

Duty was strong. He tapped the call acceptance key. "Yes?"

A familiar voice came through, shaded by jovial cheer. "Hey, boss. Uh, not to pry, but you got a visitor of the Praxian persuasion in your office right now?"

Smokescreen blinked, and Optimus Prime shot him a questioning look. "Yes, in fact I do. Why do you ask, Jazz?"

"Because I gotta know:" Jazz's voice dropped an octave and all amusement in a split second, "**what in the Pit did you say to Prowl, Smokes?**"

The chair teetered on two legs before clattering back down to four. The mech wedged half under it didn't move. A faintly scared noise drifted up from him.

Optimus Prime craned his neck to see over his desk. "Good timing, Jazz. He and I were just discussing that."

"That's nice. Has he happened to mention that Prowl's a fraggin' mess right now 'cause of whatever he said?" Jazz sounded entirely too calm, but the mech's smooth tenor had plunged into ice. Smokescreen crawled further under the chair and eyed the door warily. He also eyed the air vents, because Jazz. It didn't matter if the air vents in this office were too small for anything but a snake and booby-trapped from here to Cybertron and back again, because Jazz.

His boss/friend steepled fingers in front of thoughtful optics that cruelly ignored his imminent demise at Jazz hands. "We were getting to it. Pop quiz, Jazz. List five reasons Prowl should date Smokescreen."

Smokescreen's engine spluttered indignantly from floorward, but the other end of the open intercom went silent briefly. "Uhhh…okay. Hold on, I've got this. He's an aft, he's an aft, he doesn't give a scrap about anybody but himself, he's an aft, and he upset Prowl. Wait, no, those're all reasons **not** to date him. Prowl shouldn't date Smokescreen, that's what I'm sayin'."

Optimus Prime nodded the way he did when a human diplomat dictated how the Autobots should be fighting the war said Autobots had been fighting for millions of years. A sort of _'mmhmm, isn't your opinion interesting'_ gesture that managed to convey sincerity without commitment. "I'm picking up on some anger on your part, Jazz. Did Prowl say why he was upset?"

"No!" Jazz snarled, motor giving a loud rev. "He came in here, dumped his inbox on my desk, and asked me to take over his duties temporarily. He delegated, Prime! Since when does Prowl delegate?! There's a list of stuff waitin' for his signature in my queue! This's - I mean, I don't even know what this Guatemala thing's about, and why does Seaspray need clearance for the Panama Canal?"

"While that is," the Prime searched for the right word, "unusual, I don't see how that means Prowl is upset. Perhaps he needs time to think. He's never taken personal leave before, but we've certainly encouraged him to in the past."

Jazz's voice chilled past ice into steel and knives. "He used a **contraction**, Prime. He came in here and said, 'I'll be unavailable for the rest of the shift.' He actually said that. I 'bout fell outta my chair. Smokescreen!"

Augh, no, Primus protect him. There wasn't a soldier in the ranks who wouldn't answer when Jazz cracked his voice like that. "Hi?"

"**What did you do.**" Stabby McStabberson via voice only. Death by intercom.

"I, uh, well." Rounded optics begged for help over the edge of the desk. Smokescreen didn't want to die. "I…kind of…asked a question?"

Blue optics crimped at the corners back at him, and Optimus Prime suppressed a chuckle. "He asked Prowl if he would consider dating him."

"Oh." The silence on the other end of the intercom ticked how bomb timers did, and Smokescreen inched for the door as the situation clicked in Jazz's head. "Ohhhhh. He - ohhhhhhhhh." Another silence, this time longer and tinged by embarrassment. More inching on Smokescreen's part. The Prime looked mightily amused at their expense. "That list you asked me for…um, you were. Hintin'. That'd I jumped the gun on this one."

"Yes."

"I'm, uh, feelin' a bit like a moron over here."

"Yes, I think that's appropriate. I think an apology might be in order, as well." The way he said it made it a suggestion strongly backed by a mech who happened to command the faction. Nothing official, but that apology should be on its way soon or an irate Prime could be in the weather forecast.

Jazz's voice reached through the intercom and sheepishly picked up the daggers and icicles melting on his boss' desk. Oops. "Did I chase him out of your office?"

Optimus Prime considered the distance from chair to door. The wild chair-dwelling Smokescreen had halved it but not outright run, likely because nowhere was safe from Jazz. Staying in the office meant there would be a witness. "No, he didn't make it that far yet. I think you've scared the daylights out of him, as the humans say."

"Um, yeah, 'bout that." Awkwardness bloomed from the desk intercom in a wave. "I didn't - sorry, Smokes. That was really outta line on my part. You…asked Prowl out on a date, huh? Where to?" He sounded suddenly bright and curious.

It was frankly alarming how fast he could switch gears. Smokescreen worked his jaw but couldn't scrape up the bearings to answer. Because Jazz. Scary, scary Jazz, who wanted to talk like best friends after threatening to eviscerate him with nothing more than a tone of voice. The whiplash in this conversation would snap his neck yet.

Optimus Prime took pity on the both of them when the silence stretched out, leaving Jazz hanging and Smokescreen anxiously scooting the chair closer to the door. "Not quite to that point yet, Jazz. It seems that they're doing their best not to tread on each other's feet. He's only gone as far as asking if Prowl would think about dating him. Prowl, however," he picked up the datapad showing Smokescreen's bullet points of the conversation, "asked him whether he would advise them risking their friendship that way, and he said no. I suspect that Prowl has taken the rest of the shift off to think about it."

Jazz groaned. "Y'mean he's off talking himself into a corner because the mech don't know how to go for what he wants. And I didn't exactly help, did I."

"You've provided Smokescreen with more reasons as to why it's a bad idea. So no, you didn't help at all."

"Scrap."

"I'm just going to go hide in my quarters forever now." Laughing high and nervous, Smokescreen ditched the chair and made a break for it.

Only to run right into Jazz the second the door opened. "Eep!"

"Smokescreen!" the shorter Autobot exclaimed, brilliant smile in place, and an iron-hard hand latched onto the joint of one door as the Datsun turned to flee. It hauled him back into the office to trap him in a small room with the Prime and his evil Head of Special Operations, where he would surely die. The sound that wheezed out of Smokescreen's vents could have come from a deflating balloon. "Just the 'bot I was looking for! Can we talk? We should talk. I think we gotta talk. See, I might've said some things I shouldn't've, and now you're thinking this thing with Prowl's a bad idea when really - just a misunderstanding! Total mix-up. I'm here to clear things up, yeah?" Jazz took in the gambler, who matched him grin for grin but looked slightly terrified around the edges where the poker face didn't cover fear for life and limb. "Uh-huh. Breathe, Smokes."

"I'm breathing just fine." He'd breathe a lot easier if a hand wasn't clamped on the vulnerable joint on his back. "You wanted to talk?"

Jazz glanced at Optimus Prime, who conveyed _Get On With It_ in a singularly expressive wave of a hand. "Yeeeeeah. I'm not here to beat the carburetor outta you, just so you know. Think you already know what I'll do if you hurt Prowl, but I've kinda reached the conclusion that Prowl'll be a lot happier if you two do anything, even if it ends up hurting him. So I'm here to talk, that's it. Just talk." He cautiously let go of his handhold and stepped back. Optics flicked to the door. Smokescreen shifted on his feet, skittish and ready to run, and Jazz put his hands up to show they were empty. "Just talk, I promise."

"Uh, yeah. Talk." That was what Jazz said when he went in to interrogate Decepticons, too. Smokescreen was not reassured. Vortex didn't avoid Jazz like the plague because the SpecOps mech talked _nicely_.

"I…might've given you the wrong impression on how I feel 'bout you asking Prowler out on a date or six. Thought maybe I should correct that." The power of Optimus Prime's disappointment bent upon him, and Jazz squirmed. His visor avoided the desk and the mech sitting behind it. Smokescreen stepped back to glance between them, asking a silent question, and the smaller Autobot offered a feeble shrug. "My bad. He's my pal, that's all. You know what he's like. You've been around him. He's got it together on the job, but off the clock…" Jazz trailed off and gave an eloquent shrug.

Smokescreen found himself nodding agreement. Prowl was the most competent Autobot he knew of, but the mech behind the officer gave off a peculiar aura of vulnerability. He'd decided it was a byproduct of being a workaholic crossed with aggressive tactical mods. The inbuilt battle computer had done the mech no favors. That level of internal modification couldn't be turned off on a whim, and learning to lead a life outside of work had been pushed aside for so long Prowl didn't even know where to begin. It made Smokescreen want to cuddle him. He _got_ why Jazz exploded into protective mode.

Didn't make him feel any safer, but he got it.

"I used to scam mechs like Prowl," he said, not without some affection. "He has zero self-confidence sometimes."

"Yeah, that." Jazz rubbed the back of his neck. "I gotta remember he's an independent mech. He doesn't need me to protect him, but frag me if the need to defend him don't pop up awful strong. I'm just," he opened his hands upward, "lookin' out for my friend. You got a rep, m'mech."

That took a second to sink in. Smokescreen's doors went up at the same time his head snapped back. "I do?"

Jazz's smile turned lopsided. "Fast'n'easy, that's you. Right t' the business and out again."

"Oh, well." He relaxed. "That. Of course." The two officers stared at him. "What? I thought you meant I had a rep for breaking mechs' sparks or something, and **that** would have been news. I don't hit it if they want commitment. That's just setting up for the worst, and I'm not into hurting people." They kept staring, although Optimus shook his head and Jazz's surprise slid into a crooked grin. "But I mean, that's what I mean - you see what I mean? I'll probably screw this up two dates in, and then he'll think I just asked him out for the 'facing. I'm not any good at committing to a relationship."

He never had been. The people he'd dated had always swept him off his tires so fast it didn't matter, whirling him along in a hurricane of fragging and high maintenance relationship issues that'd eventually led to those relationships combusting. Prowl wasn't that type. There wouldn't be any huge romantic gestures in the middle of a busy transit concourse that took him totally by surprise and left him breathlessly laughing while bystanders catcalled. There wouldn't be angry slaps across the face in public that turned to violent interfacing in private. There wouldn't be quiet asides from the unit medic, or expensive signal blockers when everything had gone beyond repair. That was a good thing, really, but it was the only kind of relationship Smokescreen had ever been in. His dating life was more like a history of natural disasters: powerful, impossible to resist, and kind of fun until the damage got too bad.

Doors sagging, he sighed. "You're right. I'm too self-centered to make it work with him. I want to be the mech being pursued, not the one coaxing him out to do stuff. It'd get on my trunk that it's all on me. It'd annoy me. We'll be better off - "

A hand shook him by the door joint, and Smokescreen yelped. "Okay, here's what we're gonna do," Jazz said as if he didn't have a Datsun twisting about in his hand, trying to get loose. "We're gonna toss my scrap reject list out the door and make a new list. Let's call it 'Five Reasons Smokescreen Should Date Prowl.' How's that sound?"

Optimus Prime nodded solemn agreement to this plan. "I second the motion."

"I veto the motion!"

"Overruled." A regal nod to Jazz. "Proceed."

And they were off. Jazz talked while dragging his struggling handful of Autobot over to push down into a chair. "Reason number one: have you heard Prowl laugh around this guy? He's havin' a good time. I wasn't able to get more than a smile outta that mech until we'd been around each other vorns, and here it's only been ten years."

"That is a sign of a good friendship," the Prime pointed out over Smokescreen's objections. "Smokescreen makes many people laugh. If you're counting that as a sign of something deeper, than I disagree. That as a reason for Prowl to date Smokescreen, not the other way around."

"Ooo, good point."

"On the other hand, I have noticed the way Smokescreen talks about him. 'Smitten' is a legitimate reason, wouldn't you agree?"

"I am not smitten!"

"Overruled," both officers said without even looking at the Autobot they were discussing. Smokescreen sputtered, increasingly baffled by everything happening around him.

"That's one. Two: Smokes here needs a challenge. A slow chase is gonna get him revved up, mark my words." Jazz drummed his fingers on Smokescreen's shoulders and leaned down to peer into his face, charming and ever-so-dangerous. "You like bein' unpredictable, and you know it's gonna take Prowl off-guard if you slow way down. Doesn't fit your profile an' all." The corners of Jazz's mouth curled into an utterly evil expression. "Tell you what. Let's bet on it. You leave the invitation to th' berth up to Prowl. Keep it down to kissin' unless he pushes for it, for at **least** a year. You manage that, I'll get you in on the SpecOps movie nights."

Smokescreen stopped mid-protest as his mind caught up. "Wait, what? SpecOps has a movie night?"

"90% James Bond movies, I'm not gonna lie."

"What's the other 10%?"

"Chuck Norris and Steven Seagal."

"That sounds boring."

Jazz shrugged. "The movies are mostly there for us to get inspiration from. We spend most of th' time trying to recreate the fight scenes without stunt doubles and special FX."

That sounded like more fun, but Smokescreen hiked his door out of the way to give the saboteur a suspicious look. "Are you trying to get me to play no-touchie for a year?"

"That is rather transparent of you," Optimus Prime put in.

"Noooo," Jazz drew out, sparkling innocently under their skeptical looks. "You can touch. Just not, y'know, anything that'll get Red Alert posting a PDA Alert for the common room. You gotta get **him** to make the moves on **you**."

Smokescreen let that sink in for a minute. "Reason number three: that face," Jazz said while he was thinking, but he ignored that. He also ignored the way Optimus Prime nodded. He didn't know what his face looked like while thinking about Prowl initiating anything beyond a kiss, and he didn't want to know.

Because the reality was that, "So basically, no-touchie for a year." He shook his head. He honestly couldn't picture Prowl as aggressive. "No deal."

"50% off on carwashes in Portland for the whole year?"

"Nope."

"Aw, c'mon, that was a good one."

"Jazz, this goes right, I won't be getting carwashes in public ever again." He grinned widely as Jazz's engine skipped and the Prime coughed to cover a laugh. "Yeah, you heard me. Extra suds kinda carwash, if you get my drift." Jazz transitioned from gaping to guffawing.

Their esteemed leader rumbled his engine and pointed at Smokescreen. "Reason four: you're already making plans for being a couple. That tells me you've thought about it longer than you'll admit." The Prime knew his friend. He knew that under the slacker exterior lurked a tactical mind.

Smokescreen flailed a hand dismissively in his direction. Truth didn't have to be admitted to be true, so the Prime could suck slag. He wasn't admitting anything.

"Reason five," Jazz announced grandly once he finished laughing, "you'd have denied everything we said up and down if you were really lookin' to get outta this. You want to date him."

The Datsun rolled his helm back to give Jazz an exasperated look. "No, really. That couldn't possibly be why I fragging well asked him." His helm thunked against the back of the chair, and he blew out stale air. "That doesn't change the fact that your list of reasons why he shouldn't date me still applies."

"You're treating him like glass," Optimus Prime said. "Both of you."

Jazz and Smokescreen stared at him.

"You're attempting to make the decision for him. If you'd like to date him, then you've already done your part in asking him what he thinks. Everything else you've done since then has added to his confusion, but you haven't 'ruined' anything." He spread his hands apart, looking from hand to hand. "You want to date him but are worried about putting pressure on him." One hand sank. "He interprets that as mixed signals, which feed into his battle computer and make things more difficult for him to think about." His other hand sank, and the Prime clapped his hands together. "He can make his own reasons to fall back in love, if that's what he wants. You underestimate his ability to think around his battle computer when he truly wants something."

Folding his hands on the desk, the Prime cocked his head at the two Autobots across the desk from him. "Maybe instead of dancing about worrying about why he shouldn't date you, you should focus on reasons you want to date him. I think you're not clear on them, yourself."

They continued staring at him. "How...do you do that?" Jazz asked slowly.

The most serene of Primely expressions settled over their leader. "It's a Prime thing."

"'Prime thing' my muddy wheelwells," the saboteur scoffed, but Smokescreen was standing even as he spoke. He grabbed the taller mech by the elbow and hung on. "Hey. Hey, c'mon. It'll be fine, Smokes. That's what I came in here t' say. Prowl really wants a shot at your aft, and I don't want you thinkin' you gotta save him from himself." He nodded toward the Prime, acknowledging the warning. There was a line between protection and smothering, and he had to respect it. "Give him a chance. Give the two of you a chance. Don't...don't rush this. I know you got that rep, and that's," he hesitated and let Smokescreen go when the gambler tugged pointedly.

When he spoke again, the words came out thoughtful. "That's what's got me worried, not that you'll hurt him. I think you'll take good care of him. I just worry 'bout you two goin' too fast into this."

"And you couldn't outright say this, because..?" Optimus Prime asked.

It got him a bright smile. "Well, you know me. See a mindfrag, do a mindfrag. Mindfrags for all."

"Stay out of my head," Smokescreen muttered. He crossed his arms and gazed at a wall without actually seeing it. He had a lot to think about.

Jazz ghosted up behind him and purred, "I don't need to be in your head to frag with your mind."

"Gaaaah!"

"Jazz, stop scaring Smokescreen. Smokescreen sit down." Their leader gave them a moment to comply. "Jazz, I said stop." Jazz stopped pulling a gargoyle impression and jumped off the armrest of Smokescreen's chair. "Better. Now, Smokescreen. Can you tell us why you like Prowl?"

"Yeah."

The silence following that earned a blink. "Ah, **will** you tell us why you like Prowl?"

"Nope." His doors shrugged at the officers' raised optics ridges. "It's between Prowl and me, not him, you guys, and me."

"I dunno," Jazz mused. "I could just happen to pass some comments along and maybe give Prowl some extra reasons to believe you really do want him to date you. Little bit of motivation to get past that blasted tacnet of his."

Smokescreen narrowed his optics at the saboteur. "You were going to do that anyway."

Why bother looking innocent when guilty? Jazz grinned. "All five reasons you should date him, and a few more I made up. But I was thinkin' that if you had anything you want me to pass on - "

"He has a fantastic lightbar."

" - oh. Um?"

"I want to play with it."

"Oh, that's...huh."

"Tell him that I want to stick my hand under his hood and feel his engine turn over."

"Whoa there, keep this between the navigational beacons."

"Ask him if I can bite his lightbar, then."

"Beacon! Beacon!"

"If I bite hard enough, think his sirens will turn on?"

Jazz headed for the door. "I'm outta here. I'm gonna go find Prowl after I wipe my CPU."

It was only once the door closed behind the saboteur that Smokescreen slumped, stress showing through the confident mask. "Do you really think this is a good idea, Optimus?"

His friend reached over the desk, but he was too far away. Instead of giving up, the Prime got up and came around the desk to put a hand on his shoulder. "I do. You two may not work out, but you'll never know unless you try. How many bets do you win by not gambling at all?"

The Autobot in the chair stared at the floor as he thought that over. "None. I don't lose any bets that way, either," he added, but his spark wasn't the protest. Because they were right: he wanted Prowl. He really did.

"Smokescreen." The hand on his shoulder squeezed, and Optimus Prime chuckled. "As long as I've known you, you couldn't resist joining a new game. It's part of who you are. Besides, you wouldn't be much of a player if you didn't play."

"Think that says more about my lack of willpower than anything positive."

"Mmm, maybe. But I've never known you to leave a good game, either. And if I know Prowl," the Prime winked one optic, "he'll keep you interested in playing this game. He may even let you win."

Primus, he sure hoped so. "I just want to keep my friend. I just - what if he thinks it's too risky? What if he pushes me away?"

A tinge of sadness entered Optimus Prime's voice. "I don't think he'll do that, but that's why it's called a gamble, my friend. You don't know for certain how the other player's dice will roll. You might lose. You might win." He patted Smokescreen's shoulder, half comfort and half encouragement. "All I can do is wish you both good luck."

He'd played his round. It was Prowl's turn now, but Smokescreen looked up into the compassion in his Prime's optics and realized this was the first time he'd ever played a game without looking for a way to cheat.

He didn't want to play this like a game. He didn't want to gamble, didn't want to bet, didn't want to risk his friend like this was just another twist on the social network he navigated every day. He didn't want this to be a win-lose metaphor where Prowl had to be defeated. In a game, only one mech could collect the pot. That's not what he wanted.

He wanted Prowl to be happy. He wanted Prowl to be happy because of him. He wanted to _be_ happy. He didn't want to cheat to get what he wanted. Not this time.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

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**_[ A/N:_**_Fine. One more part after this one._

_Nobody say a frickin' word. Not one.__**]**_


	6. Pt 6

**Title: ** Playing the Long Odds

**Warning: **READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. Autobots. Awkward. _.

**Rating: ** PG-13

**Continuity: **G1

**Characters: **Autobots, Smokescreen, Prowl

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.

**Motivation (Prompt): **"_." Commission by DisplacedNoble.

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**[* * * * *]**

**Part Six**

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

It was easy. It was surreal how easy it was.

After an afternoon of worry and the fuss, Smokescreen was sure of two things: 1. his friends were a bunch of exhaust ports, and 2. Jazz was actually the spawn of the Unmaker. Optimus Prime had been unsympathetic enough to collect his winnings from the officers while Smokescreen was slumped in his guest chair - cold, mech, ice cold - but Slingshot hadn't been any better. He reacted to Smokescreen misery by laughing at him.

Okay, so the laughter might have been because Jazz arranged an entire line-up of pranks between the Prime's office and the common room. Smokescreen arrived at the common room carrying an armload of interfacing instructional manuals from Ratchet, a frighteningly buzzy thing in a box from Wheeljack that he refused to open because he wasn't naive, and security footage from Red Alert marked _'Emergency Marital Aid.'_

He hadn't even known what that meant until he looked it up. Then he was all too aware of what was likely on that footage and didn't know what Red Alert was trying to say by giving him 44 straight hours of it.

So he stumbled into the common room looking shell-shocked and in dire need of a strong drink. Slingshot laughed at him for that. He laughed at Ratchet's eerily-realistic illustrated guide to safe interfacing. He laughed when he poked the box and the thing inside vibrated its way off the table. He laughed harder at the _'Grunt's Guide to Gettin' It On'_ that Ironhide stopped by their table to drop off.

He stopped laughing eventually, however, and asked, "Why do you get all the good stuff? It your birthday or something?" The Autobots' newest gestalt didn't quite comprehend how Cybertronians typically thought about time. For them, a year on Earth was a long time and should be celebrated. They threw birthday parties every time their creation date came around, and meanwhile, the rest of the _Ark_ sort of blinked and wondered if it wasn't just an excuse for the Aerialbots to frequently con presents out of the rest of them.

Knowing this, Smokescreen still went ahead and mumbled an account of his attempt at asking Prowl out. He really, truly shouldn't have been surprised by Slingshot standing up to crow, "Pay up, groundpounders!"

Things went downhill from there. The one blasted bet in the _Ark_ he wasn't running the pool on, and of course it had to be centered on his love life. It made sense to keep the key players in the dark, true, but did they have to cash in right this minute? Right _now?_

He stormed away from the well-wishing and catcalling before someone got the bright idea to put Red Alert's gift on the big screen TV. The room cheered in his wake, the rusted pack of glitches. Out of spite, he left Wheeljack's mystery gift behind and smiled in grim satisfaction at the sound of an explosion not five minutes later.

The rest of the day was spent sulking in his quarters. And yelling at the door whenever somebody knocked to leave yet another prank gift. The new and less alarming buzzy toy from Wheeljack was appreciated, but he still hissed in shock and hauled it into the room so fast it left a vacuum. Toys were great and wonderful, and Wheeljack made the best ones any mech could collect, but they were _not something he wanted to be given in public._. That was just _rude_.

Speaking of rude, he didn't know how Jazz had managed to organize a delivery of six dozen flower bouquets from FlowerPower Floral Shoppe on such short notice. Smokescreen sweetly directed the nice young man driving the florist truck to drop them off at Prowl's door. He wrote a new note to attach to the flowers and tipped the man as thanks for the delivery service. Passing on Jazz's note would have been a horrid idea since it featured a poem that had likely made no sense whatsoever to the humans who'd faithfully copied it down. Humans didn't have that kind of equipment to do that kind of activity with, nor would they understand why congratulating someone on not needing to do equipment maintenance alone anymore was rather crude.

He'd never wanted to strangle a mech so much as when he read that. Jazz just…ugh. As if he wasn't nervous enough, Jazz had to go that extra mile in obnoxious effort.

On the other hand, the continual nagging irritations did make the time pass quickly. Night arrived in a stampede of Dinobots heading out for night patrol, because if the Autobots didn't get them out of the _Ark_, recharge wouldn't happen. The Dinobots reacted to peace and quiet the way fire did to tissue paper: a big boom, lots of bellowing, and firefights in the halls.

They reacted to night patrol the way SpecOps did to a challenge: heh heh heh. It was totally unnerving how humongous bumbling warriors could vanish into the darkness like that. Decepticons did not - repeat: _did not_ - attempt to sneak up on the _Ark_ after dark. Or maybe they did, and there wasn't enough left after Grimlock got through with them to bother reporting the fight in the morning. The rest of the Autobots would never know.

The evening dino-exodus was the signal for the rest of the ship to tick into late night. Everyone but the night shift and the insomniacs drifted toward their berths.

Smokescreen had no idea how the evening passed for everyone else, but he spent it pacing his quarters. Optimus Prime had told him he was overreacting. Jazz seemed completely confident. Jazz seemed overly confident, truth be told, but Smokescreen didn't know if that was because it was Jazz in general or because it was Jazz knowing something he didn't. Either option was equally likely. He didn't have that kind of confidence, and all he could think about was what would happen if Prowl didn't meet him tonight.

Once the stampede ended, Smokescreen tried to wait. He really did. There was no point in going to the common room early. MTV didn't put its worst celebrity reality TV shows on until midnight or later. The only thing to watch if he went early would be bad music videos from the '80s, and Blaster provided an excess of those whenever anyone was trapped on monitor duty with him.

Despite knowing that, the gambler couldn't stop himself from leaving his quarters and heading for the common room. Taking the long route didn't help. His feet had a mind of their own and quickened the pace. He found himself outside the permanently opened doubled doors of the common room far too soon. He hesitated on the threshold, and his spark sank into his tanks. Nobody sat at the tables. None of the chairs were occupied.

It was early. An hour early, he reminded himself. Prowl had a schedule. Schedules were written by Primus and were not to be bypassed for mere leisure activities. Or that was the vibe Smokescreen had always gotten off Prowl every other night they met to watch TV, anyway. He shouldn't be discouraged by the tactician not being early. Early like him. Because he'd come early despite knowing better.

Behold the loser who'd known better and still come early. Good job, Smokescreen.

A discreet little cough came from the other end of the room from where he'd been looking. His armor clattered as he jumped, startled.

He stared. Oh. Prowl was already here. An hour early, blowing off his schedule, and sitting on one of the couches.

"You hate those things," he said dumbly, because his brain had taken a temporary leave of absence. Prowl didn't sit on the couches. Prowl hated the couches, because the couches were big, squishy, beat-up beanbag monstrosities that Grapple had made couch frames for. They swallowed minibots whole.

Perched primly on the edge of one, Prowl still looked like he hated them. He sat on it how other mechs balanced on the edge of an abyss. "I…am not fond of how difficult it is to stand up from the couches," he said in a neutral tone. His hands tightened around the multicolor bouquet of flowers he held in his lap. "However, I thought you might wish to - to sit. Beside me."

When Smokescreen only gawked at him, shocked and slightly incredulous, the black-and-white mech shifted. The beanbag under him shoofed, and he immediately sank into its quicksand depths. Vents huffed, and Prowl pulled himself back out. It took some flailing. The cellophane around the flowers crinkled as he fought loose of the couch's gooshy embrace, but he managed not to crush the bouquet.

By the time he escaped, he looked annoyed by everything. He sat determinedly straight, but his doors quivered behind him, giving away his real frame of mind. The continued crinkling of cellophane also betrayed him. The mech looked calm, if slightly irritated, but Smokescreen could _hear_ his nerves prickling from here.

Meanwhile, Smokescreen hid his own sudden spate of butterflies in the tanks. Part of him bounced around the back of his mind whooping victoriously. The rest of him wanted to check that he was still in touch with reality. This was too easy. This was happening so simply. Where was the badly-timed Decepticon attack? Where were the late-night Autobots who couldn't recharge tonight, wandering through the common room making snide comments?

It was enough to make a mech cautious, even suspicious.

Of Jazz, mostly.

Smokescreen cast a considering glance back over his shoulder before deciding that if Jazz were manipulating events, he didn't stand a chance anyway. Might as well just go with it and be glad while it lasted.

He walked slowly across the room and realized he didn't have to put on a smile. Apparently he'd been smiling giddily the whole slagging time, if the ache in his face meant anything. "Sit beside you," he said. "To watch TV. Sit beside you to watch TV like friends, or do I get hand-holding privileges?"

Prowl ducked his head so low he lost his balance. The couch promptly sucked him down into its squishy deathtrap, and limbs helplessly waved. Flowers spilled everywhere. Cellophane and hushed cursing underlay the shoof of beanbag filling.

Smokescreen deftly caught one flung bouquet and checked the tag. Yep, sent from him. Technically sent from Jazz to begin with, but he wouldn't tell Prowl that. He made a mental note to thank Jazz for the deliver after all.

Ten seconds later, and Prowl gave up hope of escape. Dignity was a lost cause. All that remained visible over the back of the couch were tips of a red chevron. They looked appropriately embarrassed. Smokescreen waited, grinning and not caring in the least that he looked a fool.

Eventually, a hand ventured into view beside the chevron, open in silent offering.

Laughter skipped ahead of Smokescreen as he hopped the couch back. Beanbag stuffing squeaked violently under his weight, and the couch popped his fellow Datsun out of its squishy maw. A little stunned by the abrupt relocation, Prowl found himself sitting beside the gambler.

"This our first date, then?" Smokescreen asked, spark absolutely effervescent in his chest. Was this really happening?

Apparently it was, although the words stuck in Prowl's throat. His mouth moved, but nothing came out. Instead, he tucked his helm down between his shoulders and nodded, barely noticeable unless a mech had been looking for it.

Smokescreen had. He'd been looking at the way black-and-white doors kept rising and sinking right back down, caught between hope and - what? Fear of rejection? Uncertainty that this was the right course of action? Dear holy Primus. He'd asked the shiest mech in the history of ever on a date. Please let him not scare the poor guy off before this relationship even got off the ground.

He rolled the flowers between thumb and forefinger. Cellophane crinkled. Prowl's hands tightened where they were clamped on his knees, and Smokescreen held out the tiny, human-sized bouquet. "Did you like the flowers?"

Blue optics darted toward him, and Prowl slowly reached out to accept the gift. "Yes. It was very surprising. I did not think you would contact me until tonight."

He deliberately let his fingers linger as Prowl took the flowers. "Whatever works, Prowl." White fingers snapped back from the small contact, and their optics met in an almost physical shock. Fans whirred to life, muffled but audible, and Smokescreen held out his hand. "Sooooo?" He wiggled his fingers in unsubtle temptation.

The open hand got a long stare, as if Prowl couldn't process what was before his optics, but then it clicked. Delight hid in the tiny tremble of grey lips. Transferring the flowers to his other hand, he laid his hand in Smokescreen's, careful as Ratchet during surgery. White on blue, tentative on confident. A full smile cracked through the stoic mask, there and gone in the blink of an optic.

If Smokescreen hadn't been watching Prowl's face for just that, he'd have missed it. A second later, there was only a thoughtful look. Prowl regarded their hands as he would a move on a chessboard. The slightest dimple indented the tactician's bottom lip, however. Smokescreen felt his own smile turn fond. Aww, was Prowl biting his lip to cover a smile? He was. That was adorable.

He closed his hand enough to thread their fingers together, blue working between white until their hands laced completely together, palm to palm. The thump of Prowl's fuel pump accelerated, betrayed by the metal-on-metal of their palms, and Smokescreen rubbed his thumb lightly over Prowl's in reassurance. The pump rate sped faster before stabilizing, hammering within an unmoving body. Prowl had frozen. The tactician stared blankly at their joined hands, unable to believe this was happening and afraid that spell would break if he moved.

This was not the time to push for more. Jazz might have been right about taking things extra slow, much as Smokescreen didn't want to admit it. Prowl needed time to adjust.

Besides, Smokescreen couldn't wipe the goofy look off his face just for getting this much. Hand-holding for the win. "Welcome to Chez Smokescreen," he said, slouching back on the couch. He loved this thing. "We have bad celebrity TV shows and snacks."

Prowl reset his optics at him, but Smokescreen only squeezed his hand. His free hand went over the back of the couch to the mysterious pocket the remote control lived in. Somehow, although nobody saw anyone restock it, that pocket always had a packet of solar power derived energon goodies. Yum.

The hand in his hesitantly returned the brief squeeze, and Smokescreen tugged, daring to coax the mech along. "Heeeeere, Prowl Prowl Prowl," he sing-songed, rattling the goodie package. "Relaaaaax. Kick back and stay a while." He'd never get Prowl to slouch, but a permanently straight back strut didn't mean Prowl couldn't relax in his own way. His version of relaxation consisted of watching TV with his arms crossed instead of processing requisition forms with one optic on whatever show was on.

The goal tonight was to substitute holding hands for crossed arms. It seemed like a small goal, but not really. There was a difference between changing Prowl himself or changing his routine. Smokescreen wasn't interested in the first, and baby steps were important in changing routine on a mech like Prowl. Giving him enough time to construct logic trees to get over or around his battle computer was important. Personal pleasures were assigned low priority in his head.

Progress was progress, and what the frag, he'd resolved to take this relationship slow. Handholding was an important relationship marker.

Even if it hadn't been for him before, it was now. The Bluestreak-bright optics gazing at their joined hands gave away what Prowl's face didn't, and Smokescreen's spark spun warmly at the sight. He waggled the goodie package some more, garnering an unamused look at the bait. The tactician snorted at his exaggerated coaxing.

"I do not enjoy those," Prowl said. Optics still shining, he set the tiny flower bouquet on the low table in front of the couch.

Smokescreen shifted aside to give him room to gingerly settle into the couch. Sitting bolt upright or not, that much concession to the couch's gooshy nature was a triumph. "No, you like them fine. You just think everyone'll think you're weird if they know you like the worst flavors."

"They are not the worst flavors!"

Defensive? Just a tad. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

No comment on the flavor debate, because Prowl disappeared the dregs of the energon goodie packets in large amounts. Smokescreen gobbled half a packet on his own on their TV nights, but everyone always left the yellow and hot pink ones behind. He pushed the mountain of mostly-empty packets conveniently within reach of Prowl's chair, and the tactician snacked on the nasty colors during commercials.

Prowl chose to ignore that and grumbled, "I am not a lady."

Silence answered him. Smokescreen clicked the remote, and late-night news blurted something about a big announcement from the Pentagon. Prowl managed to sit further upright, against all laws of nature and whatever physics governed beanbags. The newscaster chattered, and Smokescreen nodded to himself. That made sense of the President's heart-to-spark with the Prime early today. But they were off-duty. The news could wait until tomorrow.

Prowl's business face dropped into exasperation as Smokescreen cheerfully channelsurfed away. The rapidfire clicking made black-and-white doors flatten into a peeved line behind him, and Prowl glowered at MTV when it came on. They'd agreed on the off-duty/on-duty rules of their TV nights nine years ago, however, and he only huffed annoyance out of his vents.

Smokescreen grinned at him and gave the remote control a showy flip, bringing their clasped hands up to lay the device over their wrists like a fancy maître d' presenting a bottled vintage for approval. "M'lady?"

That earned him the sound of an outraged tea kettle, and Prowl reached over to snatch the thing.

Quick as a snake, Smokescreen seized his hand, holding it still while he dipped his helm. He brushed his lips across the tip of Prowl's middle two fingers. The rest of them curled, and the remote nearly slid from the stunned mech's hold before the gambler released him. He let his hand drop to cover their joined hands. He smiled and patted the hand now squeezing his own in a death grip. "Don't be so quick to turn down a ladyship. Ladies get to have affairs with the knights and all that. Huge scandals." He brought their hands up, turning them to press a kiss to the back of Prowl's hand, and this time the remote did fall into Prowl's lap as his free hand opened, reaching for but not quite touching that yellow chevron.

The gambler looked up at him from under it and put on his most innocent look. "I'll try not to kill King Arthurimus Prime."

Prowl closed his mouth and swallowed. "You are not a knight," he said after recovering his voice. "A jester, perhaps."

"It'll be a funny affair."

"You realize that you are not as clever as you think you are."

"Mech, I'm **hilarious**."

The banter went on as usual, and Prowl let Smokescreen gradually pester him into settling into the couch a bit more. Not perching on the edge was probably as far toward a sprawl as he'd get. Smokescreen dedicated himself to taking up more than his fair share of space, since Prowl wasn't using it. One foot crossed over his knee, their clasped hands rested beside his leg, and he slouched in the opposite direction for no more reason than he could prop his elbow on the arm rest and dig his back into the corner of the couch. It let him hang his right door off the side of the couch and comfortably pop the left door's hinge up over the seat back.

After a while, Prowl adjusted to feeling as though the couch were about to suck him down to his doom. Smokescreen rattled the energon goodies at him, and he sighed and took a few yellow ones (Ha!) to chew on, frigid optics skewering the gambler when he started to say something about his choice in flavor. Smokescreen snickered. Prowl chose to ignore him. He even seemed to forget they were holding hands as the next show came on. _'Celebrity Deathmatch'_ was one of the few human TV shows that seemed to amuse Prowl, if only because it got some of the celebrities their just desserts in his mind. The two Praxians started commenting, bickering over claymation violence and speculating when some human would get the idea to do Optimus Prime and Megatron in an episode.

"I'd be all over that."

"Everyone would want to see that," Prowl agreed. He seemed oblivious to Smokescreen playing with his fingers, thumb stroking them one by one in slow exploration.

Although if the tactician didn't think Smokescreen saw how he still held his free hand in a loose fist pressed under his bumper, he had another thing coming. That little gesture of affection had caught him by surprise, and he'd liked it if Smokescreen wasn't mistaken. This casual normal banter was an act. It all was: the relaxing, the apparent disregard for holding hands with him, the fact that he rarely glanced Smokescreen's way. They were holding hands, but by Prowl's behavior, nothing had changed.

Something had changed, all right. Fans whirred, low but persistent. The jackrabbit thump of an accelerated fuel pump pulsed against Smokescreen's palm. The calm attitude was a mask over what Prowl actually felt but wouldn't show.

Smokescreen was fine with that. Prowl wasn't one for dropping his dignity. It was enough that the stiffly formal mech had joined him on the couch he normally avoided at all costs, that he pressed the sensor ghost of Smokescreen's kiss near to his spark. Those small, sentimental gestures said more than words or an expression did.

Besides, some actions made more noise than words. The couch was a squishy, squashy thing. This was a piece of furniture whose beanbag filling telegraphed every move made. He knew the minute Prowl started inching toward him. Even the subtlest movements made ridiculous _shoof shoof_ sounds.

Sneaking a look away from the TV, he glimpsed Prowl pretending total interest in the TV. Nothing happening here, just watching TV while incremental scooting closer. From what he could tell, one black-and-white door was angling back sharply, aiming to brush against a blue one. It was an awkward angle, and progress was measured in the bittiest inching imaginable. Inch inch inch.

_Shoof shoof shoof_.

Inch. Inch-inch.

_Shoof._

He pretended not to notice. Saying something would likely crystallize the black-and-white Praxian's fuel lines into pure embarrassment. Prowl was trying _so hard_ to not be caught doing anything improper, but this wasn't improper in the least. What could possibly be more innocent than holding hands and brushing doors?

Prowl was so cute he shouldn't be legal. And Smokescreen was turning into such a sap for him. Smokescreen shifted position on the couch and hitched his left door up over the back of the couch, out of reach. The hand in his tightened, but other than that, no reaction. Prowl feigned absorption in the current reality show. TV watching sure was fascinating, yup. He wasn't disappointed over lost door-brushing opportunities at all, nope.

Heh. Smokescreen might have fallen for the act if he didn't see those hopeful doors droop a full centimeter. Awww. He'd disrupted Prowl's plans again. He could all but see him recalculating, trying to figure out what had gone wrong.

As soon as he thought Prowl was busy thinking, he shifted again. Leaning forward, the gambler set his elbow on his knee and twitched his doors up before lowering his left one carefully, sliding it down into the space between Prowl and the back of the seat. Of course Prowl wouldn't lean back into the couch, but that was his loss. Smokescreen took every opportunity to sit on the couch that he could. This thing was so much better than building twelve different pieces of furniture to fit every different frametype onboard. Everybody could sit on it together, which meant that Smokescreen had played this game before.

He knew exactly how to take advantage of the beanbag filling in this kind of situation. Prowl jumped, startled by the unexpected touch to the back of his door, and Smokescreen gave one experience tug on their hands as he slumped back into his corner of the couch.

"There, that's better," he said a second later, justifiably smug.

A high sound bled out of Prowl's vocalizer, panic and agreement fighting to get out. His fans ran high, rattling from sudden acceleration. Rounded blue optics stared straight ahead, sightless, and he didn't move a gear. His hand held Smokescreen's in a death grip, and his door vibrated where it was tucked down behind the gambler's shoulder. Tension hummed through every cable and wire. He wasn't moving. He didn't dare move. He didn't know what to do. Smokescreen's left door pressed onto the hinge of his right door, wedged in place like a strange headrest behind his helm. That allowed them to sit beside each other, shoulder to shoulder, and his whole side was almost against - the only thing between them was their joined hands - and - and -

His vents restarted in a shuddering burst, popping open from air pressure at long last in a sound not unlike a gasp. He concentrated on regulating his ventilation system for a short while, hoping the light-headed, dizzy contact-high would taper off. Smokescreen's hand let go, fingers slipping loose from his own. A disappointed whine leaked from Prowl's engine, which turned over in a surprised _gronk!_ when the gambler eased his arm up out of the way. That settled them closer together. Intimately close together. Without Smokescreen's arm between them, Prowl found himself pressed into the mech's side.

His vents whistled from how fast his fans kicked up, and Prowl's throat worked silently as he realized he could slide his shoulder tire into the wheel well on the side of Smokescreen's chest. They could fit closer together. If he dared move, he could ease himself under the other Datsun's arm and snuggle. If he dared.

To all appearances, both Autobots on the couch were mesmerized by the television. Such intent TV-watching.

Neither of them could have answered a single question about what they were supposed to be watching. Despite gazing intently at the TV, they were completely focused on each other.

Smokescreen kept his fans steady, breathing slow and relaxed. He doubted his racing his fuel pump could be detected, not with the way stress nearly shook Prowl in its grip. Without looking away from the TV, he tried to parse that reaction. He had an excuse ready for getting up if he was going too fast, but he couldn't decipher what paralyzed tension meant. It could be _'do not want'_ or _'do not want to spoil the moment.'_

When in doubt, communicate. "You okay?" he asked in a whisper, pitching the careless act aside. They were doing something, and he wasn't going to pretend otherwise.

"Fine." It would have been a curt answer if it hadn't come out in a squeak.

"You want to sit up?"

"No." Prowl sucked in a deep vent and controlled his voice. "No, I am fine as I am."

Smokescreen looked away from the TV at last to study him. Their frametype wasn't great for cuddling face-to-face, but given the couch and the way it allowed them to position their doors, this worked. A spark of mischief made him walk his fingers along the back of the couch. "Fine?"

"I am fine."

His arm slid after his hand, smoothing along the top edge of Prowl's door. It started to twitch and froze mid-motion. "Still fine?"

"I am fine."

"Mm. Okay. You'll tell me if something's wrong?"

An irritated flick of his door met the continued questions. "I will say something if I am - oh."

The walking fingers eeled behind his door the moment he moved it, and Smokescreen's arm followed them. Prowl held extremely still as that arm dove under his door and settled around his waist.

"You can say you need me to back off," Smokescreen murmured. "Anytime. Just give me the word."

Prowl managed to shake his head. His face had drawn taut, the corners of his mouth turning down and tension gathering between his optic ridges. Set into that borderline disapproval, his optics glittered a vivid blue bright enough to be seen blazing even from the side. Smokescreen suspected the dimple on his bottom lip was back, as well. Even more telling, Prowl's right arm slowly drew back until his white hand cupped over the gambler's blue one, their fingers loosely interweaving.

The Second-in-Command of the Autobots frowned at the television. Only an astute observer would see the slight flaws in the stern mask.

Smokescreen tilted his head, optics gone a soft royal blue as he gazed down at the mech sitting stiffly tucked into his side. Shaking his head, he went back to actually watching the TV. He ignored the quiet shoofing of the couch as the tactician unfroze joint by joint. Prowl stopped dead every time the beanbag filling shifted under them, but Smokescreen just kept watching the show. Prowl seemed to be trying to get comfortable, now. Getting comfortable was different than drawing away. Getting comfortable meant the tactician wanted to stay for a while, and that was awesome.

Between the shoofing noises and their armor scraping, it took fifteen minutes for Prowl to fidget into place. Smokescreen didn't bother hiding his slag-eating grin when they ended up nestled even closer, kibble hooked on and over each other. It took another ten minutes before Prowl hesitantly leaned the side of his helm beneath Smokescreen's shoulder mounts. This close together, Smokescreen could feel his fuel pump pounding and fans burring. Smokescreen's engine purred slow and reassuring as he cautiously set the side of his jaw against the top of the tactician's helm.

Featherlight pressure pushed into the nudge. His cheeks felt tired from holding the wide smile, but he wasn't going to stop anytime soon.

It felt good. It felt like he'd been missing this, and it felt too easy. They fit together too easily: Prowl stiff but learning, and Smokescreen letting the black-and-white Autobot work it out. Prowl's fans whirred and his fuel pump was running far too fast, but it still felt easy. It felt right. The awkward transition period from friendship to dating hadn't stretched out, there hadn't been any misread signals or assumptions made. Smokescreen had sat on this couch by himself two nights ago, Prowl sitting in a chair dragged over from one of the tables, and now they were sitting together. It was - somehow, amazingly - not a big deal.

All that dramatic build-up for an anti-climax. He could live with that.

His thumb rubbed little circles against Prowl's side, and the mech's fuel pump stuttered. Prowl couldn't quite muffle the rev of his engine, but Smokescreen didn't say anything. He didn't say anything about how Prowl's chevron was leaving red paint transfers on the underside of his shoulder mounts. Prowl seemed comfortable now, but Smokescreen knew that position would leave a crick in his neck struts tomorrow.

Regardless of paint transfers or sore necks, neither of them moved as the credits rolled. Bad music videos were up next, but the white hand left blue momentarily. The sound muted, and then Prowl's fingers delicately slid over his again. Smokescreen tightened his hold on his armful of warm, willing mech and dimmed his optics to feel for a while. This was the tamest first date he'd ever been on, and it was weirdly satisfying.

He couldn't pinpoint any one particular reason for the happiness buzzing in his spark. He was just _happy_.

It was past 3 AM when Prowl finally stirred. He sounded hushed and apologetic when he spoke. "We both have duty tomorrow morning, first shift."

Smokescreen's systems whirred up from the stand-by they'd dropped into, and he hummed acknowledgement. He shifted slightly to press the underside of his chin onto Prowl's helm. He could stand to stay like this a couple more hours.

Duty called, however. "We are already below optimal hours of recharge."

"Mmhmm." Another hum, and he ducked his head to nuzzle that red chevron.

It clipped his nose when Prowl's helm whipped around. "Smokescreen, this is neither the time nor the place."

"Implying that there's a time and place?" An optic ridge rose suggestively, and Prowl's optics widened. But their faces were too close for much joking, so Smokescreen backed off. "Alright, alright, getting up."

A difficult procedure indeed, as the couch had partially digested them in its beanbag gullet. The filling had shifted under their combined weight to pack them in place. That was great for cuddling but not easy to escape, especially with the way their arms and doors were tangled together. Prowl tried to stay stoic, but his engine sputtered more than once during the process of extracting themselves. Smokescreen had to help him climb upright, and it was thoroughly enjoyable. Hands might have strayed. Helpfully strayed, of course. The hand on his hip was there to boost him up, nothing more.

Smokescreen didn't get _too_ grabby, although the temptation was there. He did linger behind Prowl while the mech gathered the flowers scattered everywhere. He wanted to take in the view.

That was a mighty fine aft bent over in front of him. His head cocked to the side, and he gave it a detailed analysis. Results: hot. Gropable, even. It'd fill out his hands nicely, and he wanted to take a big pinch of it to see the reaction.

From the way said aft's owner suddenly straightened, doors sweeping down as if to hide it, Smokescreen had gotten caught ogling. So much for planning an unofficial reflex test. Onward to fantasizing! He gladly switched to admiring Prowl's doors. Black, white, and perfect for grabbing from behind, or stroking while they spread overhead. He should know: his were perfect for that, too.

Prowl glanced back and reset his optics in a startled blink. Smokescreen's trademark easy smile took the place of the leer, and he was left wondering if he'd imagined it. No, he hadn't. Smokescreen's reputation preceded him.

Holding the reassembled bouquet in front of himself, the tactician turned and braced himself. He cleared his throat intakes to reset his vocalizer. "I - I would, ah." His tongue peeped out to lick his lips, a nervous gesture at odds with his blank expression. It did fit the way his hands crinkled the flowers. "I would invite you back to - to my quarters for the night, but my processor requires as much time as possible to defragment before the first shift begins. I am sorry, but I can only suppress my battle computer for a certain amount of time without repercussions - "

"Prowl! Prowl," Smokescreen interrupted him, holding up one hand. "A., you don't need to explain yourself to me. You've got a reason that's good enough for you, so it's sure as the smelter good enough for me. And B., why the frag are you apologizing?" He stooped to pick up the lone, slightly wilted flower bouquet that had been set on the table, and he held it out, hoping his smile didn't look as tender as his spark felt. "I wasn't expecting to go back to your room tonight. I was expecting to watch bad MTV shows and see if we, y'know." He shrugged. "Clicked. Felt like we're going somewhere. Had a good time. I don't know about you, but I had a great time. You?"

From the way Prowl stared at him, he suspected his face had given him away. One white hand reached out to accept the flowers. "I had a…a time."

A bark of laughter badly disguised as a cough escaped Smokescreen. Prowl blinked at him, puzzled.

Black-and-white doors shot up in a V seconds later. "A good time! A wonderful time, thank you, I am - I would like to - in the future, may we - that is, if you would like - perhaps we might - "

After ten years, Smokescreen had gotten better at interpretation. Translated from Extraordinarily Flustered Cant (as spoken by the clan of normally reserved tacticians), he thought that meant, "Second date?"

"**Yes.** Relief rushed out of every vent, visibly deflating building anxiety. Prowl's doors went slack. "Please. If that is what you wish as well?"

The laughter this time was rueful amusement. "I think we're going to be better off assuming we're both into this unless somebody says otherwise, or we're going to be trading _'if you want'-'only if you want'-'are you sure'_s at each other all night." Looking back at it, he could see how he'd missed the obvious back in Prowl's office earlier today. They could do without a repeat of that. "Do you want to actually go out somewhere, next time?" He headed for the exit, walking slow, because he knew them. They'd start talking about something and remember an hour from now that they meant to leave if they didn't start leaving now.

Prowl walked at his side, optics searching the bouquet for an answer. "I… would not object?" he hazarded. "What locations are second dates typically conducted in?"

Smokescreen side-eyed him. The tactician seemed serious. He couldn't decide if that was funny or tragic. "It's not a training exercise, Prowl. It's a date. The point is to do something together, or not do something but not do it together. There isn't a guide somewhere dictating where and when we should do stuff."

The rest of the walk to the exit was silent except for the quiet crinkle of cellophane. Prowl seemed to be turning that over in his head.

He stopped when they reached the corridor outside. "I am aware of the 'point' of dates, but I lack understanding of current social mores relating to them. The dating protocols in my databanks are outdated, as has been explained to me - "

"Wait, explained by who?" Smokescreen hadn't ever said anything about Prowl's old-fashioned beliefs on how dating worked. It'd always been just one of the mech's quirks, to him, and he'd figured they would talk about stuff as it came up. Like the threesome versus an exclusive relationship. That sort of stuff.

Prowl gave him a dry look. "Jazz." Oh. Well, duh. Who else? "He informed me that a first date no longer requires a chaperone." Smokescreen stared. "I, ahem." He reset his vocalizer. "I assumed you would appreciate the lack of formality." Continued staring. Tires scuffled on the floor as Prowl's nervousness got the better of him. Smokescreen kept staring, suspicion creeping into the back of his mind, because that right there looked more like guilt than shyness.

The truth came out in a hurried list. "Jazz refused to be present, Optimus Prime said he would be compromised, Ironhide and Ratchet ignored my request, and Wheeljack's terms for being present involved us testing an - item best left private." Blue optics flushed dark in embarrassment, but Prowl's tone turned oddly relieved. "Red Alert agreed to monitor this room's security cameras personally tonight."

Smokescreen indulged in the world's slowest facepalm, bringing his hand up at the speed of a glacier to cover his optics and drag down his face.

"Are...are you upset?"

He heard throat intakes open and close in a swallow, and for some reason, knowing his reaction worried the mech made the exasperation bubbling in his tanks cool. He was still exasperated, but getting Red Alert to chaperone a completely chaste date was just so _Prowl_ that he had to laugh. "Red watches everybody anyway. Can't tell you how many times he's blared a PDA Alert on me over the network. So no, not really **upset**, but - this's something we've got to talk about. If it'd been anyone but Red Alert, I'd've been kind of angry, yeah." Mostly that he wasn't told about it beforehand. A fifth wheel on the car was fine if it made Prowl more comfortable, but Smokescreen wanted to know about this stuff before he found out like this: afterward.

Prowl studied the flowers in his hands intently. Quick flashes of blue betrayed him sneaking looks at the gambler. "I - yes, of course. We should talk." From the way his doors winched tight to his back, the idea of openly talking about them - together, as a couple - intimidated the bolts off him.

That wasn't new. Prying what Prowl really wanted out from under the professional shell enforced by his battle computer wouldn't be fun, but it'd be worth it. If he'd discovered nothing else tonight, Smokescreen had found out it'd be worth it.

Frag him sideways, but Optimus Prime had been right. He _did_ like Prowl. As in, _like_-like Prowl. He was the most adorable, fraggable, and infuriatingly reserved friend he'd ever made. He wanted to punch him in the shoulder, pull him into a hug, and then kiss him until they saw stars.

"When should we schedule this talk?" Prowl asked, still subdued, but Smokescreen stepped forward. A squawk of static gleeped out before Prowl's vocalizer clicked off.

A chuckle answered the cut-off sound, and Smokescreen smoothed his hand over Prowl's hood, fingertips tracing the Autobot emblem there. "Tomorrow. I'll bring a cube to your office, and we can talk. We don't need an escort for that, huh?" The way Prowl's optics fastened on the curve of his lips, they might. Between that look and Prowl apologizing for not inviting him back to his room tonight, Smokescreen rather thought he'd underestimated Prowl's aggression levels. The mech looked ready to pounce on him.

"Tomorrow." Resetting his vocalizer cleared the rasp from his voice, and Prowl shook his doors back, standing straight. His engine thrummed under Smokescreen's palm. "Tomorrow is acceptable."

"Okay, so, see you then." The gambler leaned forward to nudge their bumpers together and let his hand wander up to just barely touch the cables of Prowl's neck. Close and low, he breathed, "Goodnight. Recharge well."

Black-and-white doors trembled. Optics glimmered close to each other, one set hopeful and the other playful. Smokescreen backed off first, fingers whispering over neck cables. They drew Prowl after them like they were magnetized.

Mesmerized, he only snapped back to himself when he had to take a quick step to recover his balance, nearly falling forward, and his fans whirred loudly. "I. That. Would you like to..?"

"Recharge, Prowl. Very important, remember?"

"But - "

"Your chaperone would object." Innocence beamed up at the closest security camera in the form of limpid blue optics and a merry smile. No naughty touches for the cop car. Too bad, so sad.

The frustrated whine of a throttled-down engine told Smokescreen that there wouldn't be any more chaperones, thus proving that an old-fashioned mech would cheat on traditions without a second thought if provided sufficient motivation. Heh. Still smiling, the gambler sketched a bow and turned to walk toward the soldiers' barracks. Prowl stayed there staring at his back the whole time. He knew because he threw a wink at the other Datsun before turning the corner.

Not a bad first date at all.

Their second date got interrupted by a Decepticon attack, but hey, they couldn't have everything. Decepticon attacks interrupted everybody at one point or another. The Autobots were used to having to drop whatever they were doing. It wasn't like the Decepticons were known for their kindness, and if they really wanted Jazz out on the battlefield suffering from coitus interruptus, on their heads be the consequences. Which it was, at one point in the form of a flagpole applied liberally to any head within range.

Nobody really wanted to know what the Decepticon attack had interrupted to earn an aftkicking from Ratchet, but Thundercracker refused hand-to-hand combat with the medic after that one time. The glitches did learn, if slowly. Smokescreen had noticed that the Decepticons tended not to attack when _'As The Kitchen Sinks'_ aired anymore, for instance.

Though it was entirely possible they'd gotten addicted to the soap opera, too. Weirder things had happened.

Like Prowl tackling Starscream midair.

"You're dating a maniac," Slingshot radioed as both Seconds went down in a spectacular crash beside the freeway. He'd given Prowl the assist to get above the Air Commander, and now he circled the fight, peppering Starscream with gunfire. "I admire that in a mech."

"The question is, did datin' Smokes drive him to glitching, or was it built in?" Jazz swung his rear end around as Smokescreen jumped clear, and Kickback swore as his feet were smacked out from under him. Jazz spun out of altmode, and the two Autobot piled on top of the Insecticon before he could recover.

"I vote for Smokescreen."

"For crying out loud, we've been on two dates. Two!" Telephone wire substituted for statis cuffs in a pinch, and Smokescreen was up and running in less than a minute. His tires hit the ground hard as he hurled himself through transformation, and smoke billowed behind him. He dragged the cloud in front of Soundwave, letting wind push the magnetized smokescreen into Soundwave's line of sight while Ironhide reloaded.

Jazz accelerated ahead of him, somehow already on the far side of the ditch he'd just bumped over, and he direly suspected voodoo. "One and a half. Weren't you guys busy when the alarm sounded?" How the saboteur knew that, Smokescreen couldn't even guess. 2 AM or not, no one was safe from the all-seeing visor of Jazz. "That's probably what's got him so riled up. What'd the 'Cons do, interrupt your goodnight kiss?"

"No comment." It'd interrupted Prowl's hand on his knee. Smokescreen had been watching it, wondering how far things were going to get tonight. Not far, as it turned out.

Just as well. They'd sat down and mostly sorted out what they wanted from this relationship, but Prowl still seemed convinced that the biggest change - or maybe advantage - of being a couple was the interfacing. Not that he was necessarily wrong about ten years of friendship effectively clearing the _Getting To Know You_ phase of dating, but holy Primus had Smokescreen been wrong about Prowl's sexual aggression.

He ducked a punch from Thrust and got a glimpse of Prowl and Starscream brawling. Yeah. Definitely wrong about the aggression. Interrupting the tactician right as he'd screwed up the courage to make a move had been a mistake on the Decepticons' part. If Starscream didn't already fear multiple Prowls appearing out of thin air, he'd have a Praxian phobia by the end of the night. Bluestreak had taken cover in the ditch, sniper rifle and doors visible above the dirt as he calmly, coolly shot Starscream thrusters to slag. He and Prowl were obviously working to tag-team the flyer.

"Remind me not to come a-bangin' if I hear you a-clangin'," Jazz said as if echoing Smokescreen's thoughts. "Maybe you ought to get a sign for your door or something. Just in case."

"Whose door?" Bumblebee called as he tumbled past. "His or Prowl's?"

"Holy tailfins, did I miss it? Have they moved in together?" Slingshot hit the pavement running and body-slammed Thrust from the side right as Smokescreen dropped to his knees. Thrust tripped over him, splatting face-first into the road, and Slingshot bounded over them. He launched back into the air, this time with Thrust roaring angrily in pursuit. "Smokescreen, c'mon, you gotta keep your buddies in the loop on this stuff!"

"Frag off! We're not moving in together. I'm not comfortable over in the officer block." Plus his unofficial position required him to stay among the other soldiers. Word moved quickly in the grunt bunks, and it didn't always reach anyone outside it.

Smokescreen spun on his knees and got a lucky shot at Megatron. The tyrant bellowed, one leg's circuitry temporarily scrambled, and Optimus Prime nailed him across the jaw with a haymaker that would have sent a lesser mech into next Tuesday. Being Megatron and therefore one step from invincible, he grunted and shook it off. He couldn't shake off Grimlock, however, and there was suddenly a whole lot of Dinobot on the battlefield. Tons of it, tearing up the place and belching fire at Decepticons who knew better than to keep fighting.

"Decepticons, retreat!" Megatron screamed. "This isn't over, Prime!"

The Prime started to reply, only to get interrupted by an irreverent, "Tune in next week, same bat-time, same bat-channel!"

Sideswipe looked unrepentant even while dodging a parting blast from Megatron's cannon.

"Th-th-th-that's all folks!" Blaster called after the retreating mechs. "Roll call! Everybody alive?"

"Damage report," Prowl snapped over the open channel as the last Decepticon vanished into the distance.

"My dignity's dead. I accidentally goosed Skywarp."

"I will be sure to inform Medical of its demise. Memorial service is tomorrow, noon, cleaning detail. Anyone else?"

Surprisingly, the battle yielded few casualties on their end, in part because Prowl had managed to keep the Air Commander grounded. A tactician seeing an opportunity, then, not a maniac out for revenge. Although that didn't stop Cliffjumper from nudging Smokescreen and sniggering. The gambler shoved him away and went to help the wounded.

They didn't need much help. A bent wing on Fireflight, dislocated knuckle and wrist joints on a few mechs who'd gone heavy on the punching, but most of them had only suffered dented armor. Anybody who hadn't gotten out of the melted asphalt fast enough had blown tires, but that was more of a nuisance than a casualty. Those who couldn't locate suitable spare tires got a lift in the Prime's trailer for the ride back.

That conveniently corralled them in one place to face Ratchet's tender mercies. He opened the trailer doors and ran a judging optic over them. "Triage. Who here got hurt from acts of blatant stupidity?"

Nobody was stupid enough to volunteer, but Jazz peered in around the medic and pointed. "Manly heroics. Guilty."

Prowl's perpetual frown turned briefly unsettled. "What? I did not - I am not a man, nor did I engage in anything that could be labeled 'heroic.'" The look Ratchet immediately turned on him was not reassuring, and his lesser-damaged hand wrapped around his dislocated wrist as if to hide it from the medic's keen gaze.

Jazz grinned. "He jumped Screamer."

"He **what**?" Ratchet glared harder, the look on his face completely at odds with how he began helping Autobots out of the trailer. Gentle hands ran over armor, scans cycling over and over as he passed each mech off to his assistants to be brought into the medbay. "Leave the stunts to people who can't claim to have common sense!" The harsh words were directed right at Cliffjumper, who didn't try to deny his lack of foresight. First Aid took his elbow from Ratchet's hold, cradling the broken fingers in the palm of his other hand as they walked into the medbay.

Prowl gave them time to move out of the way before getting out of the trailer. "It was part of the plan."

"The manliest of all plans."

"You keep using that word. I do not think you understand what it means."

"Macho, macho man~"

"You are not helping, Blaster."

Ratchet paused his examination of the tactician's wrist - simple dislocation, easily fixed - to hoist an optic ridge at him. "Were you showing off for someone?"

"He totally was!"

Prowl's face was the picture of someone who had lost all faith in Primus, for this was what he had been condemned to deal with on a daily basis. "I am willing you to shut up. It does not seem to be working."

Chuckling occurred at his expense. His belief in Primus failed to reappear.

Since he could work as well from the medbay as anywhere else processing after-action reports, Ratchet put him at the end of the repair list. Jazz was out and about evaluating collateral damage from the battle, Ironhide was doing armory maintenance and inventory, and Prowl would be the last patient in medbay, so Ratchet could hand him Medical's after-action report on his way out. Besides, having an officer waiting for minor repairs with the rest of the grunts encouraged patience in the restless mob.

Nobody else needed the repair slab at the far end of the medbay. The Autobot Second claimed it, separate but present. There he sat, working. Report datapads collected on his repair slab the way Get Well cards collected beside hospital patients, and he didn't even notice the time pass.

"Hey, there."

Until he was interrupted, of course. Then he became entirely too conscious of the fact that his duty shift had ended over an hour ago. He looked up, optics wide, and Smokescreen indulged in the short ritual he'd adopted following their first date. When they were off-duty, that was, because there wasn't a chance in the Pit Prowl would let him get away with it otherwise.

Blue hands picked up white, and a yellow chevron clicked against red. Prowl's optics looked huge from this close.

"How're you, fuzzmobile?" Smokescreen asked as he straightened back up. He started shuffling reports aside to make room to sit.

Prowl's optics all but crossed as he looked up the term. It took a moment, and then Prowl gave him an unamused look. "That is the worst one yet."

Smokescreen hopped up to sit beside him on the repair slab. "Cherry top?" He leaned back to check out the lightbar on his altmode's roof. "Suppose you're more of a blueberry and cherry top. How about I just call you dessert?"

"That is not vehicle slang." Prowl pushed a couple more datapads out of the way.

"No, but you're sweet enough."

He stopped, hands full of datapads, and confusion and disbelief traded off on his face. "I cannot...Smokescreen, you are not serious." It came out like a question. Pet names were something of a tradition among the Autobots here on Earth, the more absurd the better. It kept the human groupies away, sometimes. Smokescreen had hit on using police vehicle slang, but Prowl hadn't approved any of his choices so far.

The gambler would have been fine calling him by his name, but Prowl wanted to be normal. He wanted so badly to have a life that didn't center around his job. He'd been defined by his work since he'd come online.

"I want something for myself," he'd said softly, in the office where they'd hashed out the basics of what they wanted from each other, and Smokescreen's spark had melted into a mushy puddle of sympathy. "Everyone I have ever envied, ever been jealous of, has explored a world of options beyond their professions. I have wondered for a long time if there is nothing to me under this," he'd tapped the side of his head to indicate his tacnet, "but I have not known how to be more. Perhaps I only need to ask for help." His smile had been a crumbly, small thing, but it'd been sparkfelt. "Help?"

One of the strongest Autobots Smokescreen had ever known, but uncertain of how to be strong without the weight of responsibility piled on him. Smokescreen knew exactly why Jazz's protective instincts went into overdrive. His were certainly getting a work-out.

So. Normal.

He hadn't ever really had a normal relationship, but Smokescreen knew how they were 'supposed' to be. It was kind of fun adapting it to them. Their version of normal involved pet names, bumping chevrons, and touching hands and doors whenever they were near each other. He showed up when Prowl had first shift, right before the shift began, for no other reason than to say, _'Good morning._' Prowl stopped behind his chair in the common room to put a hand on his door and greet him, even if he didn't sit up. They both putting up with their aftheaded friends teasing them about when they'd move in together.

Thinking about what they'd do when the war was over was moving a bit too fast in Smokescreen's opinion, so he hadn't brought it up yet. He'd thought about it, but he hadn't said anything. He was still set on opening a casino, but he was flexible on which city he went for. Real estate would probably be cheaper than building materials. He could build anywhere he could get the permits. That left where he'd actually live, but Prowl would likely end up somewhere high up in the postwar government, so downtown somewhere.

...he was moving way too fast. It'd only been a week and a half. They hadn't even gotten through two full dates.

Frag, when was the last time a date had gotten him so excited he started making plans for the future?

He shook off the odd sensation of falling and pulled himself back to the present. Prowl had returned to stacking datapads at the head of the repair slab, and Smokescreen scooted over until their doors touched. Across the medbay, everyone was busy doing their own things. Smokescreen had stopped to have a word with Mirage before coming back here, and the spy knew how to be discreet about these things. He was talking quietly with Ratchet, keeping the medic distracted. First Aid and Hound were involved in popping deep dents out of the scout's undercarriage.

Prowl still shrank away, door flicking out of reach, and an appalled glance darted toward the other Autobots. It lasted only a second before a forbidding expression slammed down over the shock. He hissed, "Not **here**. They will see us."

"So?" Smiling, Smokescreen leaned closer. "Partners visit each other in the medbay all the time. Nobody's going to be surprised that I came."

Soft noises sputtered out of Prowl's engine. "I - yes, fine. What, ah," he swallowed. "What did you need to see me about?"

Smokescreen pasted on an angelic look. "I heard you got a boo-boo." Prowl's left optic frame twitched, and the gambler dropped his vocalizer to a husky, intimate whisper as their shoulders touched, their fenders brushed. "I'm here to kiss it better."

The sound Prowl made could have been heard by dogs. First Aid and Hound looked up alertly, but Mirage asked a question that refocused them on him. The spy himself was studiously Not Looking at the other side of the medbay. Smokescreen was going to shower him with thank-you gifts tomorrow for that, because Prowl was already a mess of jitters. Having people watching him fall apart would make him retreat behind the safety of Prowl, Second-in-Command of the Autobots, Head of Tactical, Executive Officer to the Prime. Smokescreen would never be able to pry him out of his shell if that happened.

As it was, he cocked his head and bent over to look up at the shocked-senseless mech, and there were immediately hands blocking his face. Broken knuckle joints and a dislocated wrist weren't handicapping the defense. "Aww, come on. Don't be like that." He dipped under one hand, and there was another pushing at his face. "It's just a kiss."

"We are in public!"

"We're off-duty." Ah-ha, there was the flicker of indecision he'd been looking for. "One little kiss to make it better? One?" Hand to the face again, but Prowl was looking at the Autobots paying no attention to their antics over here. Smokescreen pitched his voice into a wheedle, like Sideswipe conning someone into paying his speeding ticket. "Kisses are medically advised, y'know. Part of a regular treatment plan. Good for the spark." His hips shifted, hitching him across the repair slab an inch at a time, and while Prowl's torso leaned steadily away the closer he got, his hands gave him away. They'd fallen to his lap, fingers playing together. Smokescreen tilted his head to look at the face turned slightly away from him, and that right there was Prowl biting his lower lip.

"They will see us," the tactician protested, but not convincingly.

"Who cares?" Their doors slid over each other, interior upholstery soft on hard metal. Smokescreen eased closer until they were sitting hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, and their bumpers clicked as he craned around to look Prowl in the face. "Come on. One kiss." Putting his weight on the hand beside Prowl's on the slab, he brought other his hand up to beckon with the fingers. "I'll make it all better."

Hound laughed across the medbay, and Prowl's doors shot up in a tight V. "No, I - Smokescreen, I - "

"Okay, okay!" Too fast, or too much. Smokescreen backed off, leaning away with his hands up. "Alright. No kisses." Fear wasn't the response he'd been hoping for.

Yet Prowl's fingers played in his lap, and the black-and-white mech kept casting quick, nervous glances at him, then at the others, then back to him. "Maybe it…ah. Maybe you could. Just."

He sighed and patted Prowl's fidgeting hands. "No, it's fine. I understand."

That got him a flash of troubled blue optics, however. "No, you do not. I cannot - I mean to say, I would like - it is not - " Prowl blew out a frustrated breath and stared off across the medbay, expression a hash of stern disapproval and vague helplessness.

Smokescreen frowned a bit at him, wondering what he was trying to say. The tactician looked the way he did appealing for a referee decision when playing Twister against Jazz. "I didn't hurt your wrist, did I?" He pulled on Prowl's arm until he could get a better look the injury. Busted white fingers lay over his palm, and he absently stroked them with his thumb.

Prowl made a small noise and stared harder at the back of Ratchet's helm, something oddly desperate under his thin mask of control.

"Primus fragging on the surface, **no**," Ratchet suddenly said from across the room, voice raised in irritation for the interruption. "Kisses aren't a prescribed treatment for anyone, and what kind of question is that? Of course I won't write you a prescription fo- "

The medic's voice cut off mid-word. Smokescreen looked up from examining Prowl's wrist to see four of the best stunned-bunny expressions since Starscream first saw the authority of Prowls. Hound's mouth had fallen partway open. "What?" A small sound came from the tactician beside him, and he winced. "Oh. Uh, right." Moving slow in the hope it'd make everyone stop gaping, he gingerly set down the arm he'd been holding. "Nothing to see here. Move along, move along." Look at that winning smile, everyone. Would Smokescreen lie?

Prowl's engine did not sound healthy in the slightest. He seemed paralyzed by the attention turned on him, but his armor vibrated from the vise-lock of tension holding him. His mouth drew into a borderline-angry scowl.

He looked like a respectable mech mortified that he'd been caught holding hands with his partner in the medbay. Smokescreen turned his head away to hide his goofy grin.

First Aid's hands went up to his mask, and a delighted giggle floated through the room. Prowl's optics snapped to him a second too late as the Protectobot whirled around to be the most industrious medic. He was working _so hard_, yes, of course, and Hound was immersed in watching him work. They hadn't seen _anything_, and that wasn't a smile that had just ghosted across Mirage's face. The spy retrieved a polishing cloth and busied himself wiping away nonexistent dirt on his plating.

Ratchet coughed, restarting his vocalizer. "Well, I…I see. Yes, of course." An utterly wicked gleam entered his optics. "Your injuries are worse than I knew. Only one cure is available. One prescription for a kiss, coming up." He flashed a full-blown evil grin at the Datsun, the one not making frantic little _Cut It Out!_ gestures at him. "Those're doctor's orders, Smokescreen."

Static fizzled from Prowl's throat. Smokescreen sputtered, bent over his knees, and laughed hard enough to bang his door against Prowl's leg. "Ye…yessir! Right away, Love Doctor, sir!"

Ratchet waggled his optical ridges at his superior officer and extremely shy friend. Asking the party ambulance for help with his love life had been mistake. Ratchet was often helpful in these situations, but rarely how his friends wished. Prowl would either be thanking or strangling him later, but either way, he'd gotten his assist.

It took a couple minutes for Smokescreen to stop snorting his vents open, fans buzzing. His face hurt from smiling, but he turned that smile on the mech beside him. "You heard the mech. One medicinal kiss, coming up." He crooked a forefinger at him. "C'mere." Prowl's optics were incredibly wide, and he leaned away as Smokescreen leaned in.

The gambler stopped when they were pressed together, his words puffing against Prowl's cheek and lips mere inches from it. The other Autobots were carefully ignoring them across the room, but he knew Prowl was painfully aware of them. "I can stop. It's okay. This is supposed to be silly and fun, not an ordeal or anything," he murmured so only Prowl could hear.

Those wide optics blinked at him. "I…no, I…do not. No." A hand weakly pushed at his bumper.

Smokescreen let it push him away, but Prowl actually looked more distressed by that. That alarmed him. "What? What's the problem?" He elbowed Prowl in the side. "Tell me, panda."

Prowl's poor mask of composure gave way before pure exasperation for a moment. "Not that one."

Aw, but it was such a cute pet name. "You could be my cuddly panda car," he said, knowing he was being ridiculous. The peeved glare from Prowl made it worth it.

"Fragging Pit," Ratchet snapped through internal commlink, although the medic didn't look up. "You're both pathetic at this. He's not made of porcelain, Smokescreen. He's trying to flirt and waiting for you to take control."

That - oh. "But he's telling me to stop!" he said back, saying nothing on the outside.

"Idiot. Name one romantic trope with public displays of affection where somebody doesn't. He's following the blasted rules, now play along and give him what he wants!"

Oh.

Ohhhhh.

Normal. Prowl wanted so very, terribly much to be normal, to do or have something like any other mech.

"Prowl? Panda?" Prowl's mouth twisted into a displeased shape, but then Smokescreen was leaning into him, hand cupping the side of his helm. "Do you want me to kiss you? Just give me a nod or something, and I will. I need you to tell me. You're giving me mixed signals, here. Say whatever you want, but nod or shake your head or something right now so I know what you really want."

Optics flicked toward the four mechs across the room. Toward him. Back to the others.

It was a romantic trope, now that Smokescreen thought about it that way. Protest the attention. Preserve dignity in an undignified situation where one mech was attempting to show affection in an inappropriately public setting. It was something straight out of a romance holovid.

Real life didn't work like that. Smokescreen need to _know_ the protests weren't real.

Prowl's chin dipped the tiniest possible amount.

Smokescreen's smile spread slow and warm. "Okay, then. C'mere, you." Prowl made small sounds denying him, but he pushed in against the hand on his bumper until he could ever-so-softly press his lips to the arch of a grey cheek. "There." He sat back feeling weirdly proud of himself. Had his spark always felt this light? "Feel better?"

An indistinct mumble answered him, words spoken through teeth biting into a disobedient lower lip. It kept struggling to smile. Prowl snatched his hand off Smokescreen's bumper and looked down into his own lap, blinking rapidly. His fingers twined about each other, and short, soft bursts of air panted from his vents. His optics blazed brighter than Bluestreak at his most excited, and Smokescreen's optics were just as bright.

He eyed black-and-white doors as they moved. Those were the real barometer of Prowl's reaction. Up, down. Back and forth. Small, twitching motions like a bird preening, or a butterfly opening and closing its wings in the sun. Door fluttering, itsy-bitsy involuntary motions of flustered, happy emotion even as Prowl smoothed his face back into an impassive mask.

He couldn't stop himself. He had to do it again. "I'm going to kiss youuuu," he crooned, leaning back in. He curled his fingers, beckoning Prowl in.

"No, I - " The smile was trying to come out again. Prowl looked down and to the side, and his doors fluttered faster. The happiness had to channel somewhere. "Not in front of them."

"Let 'em watch." His forefinger slipped under the tactician's chin and tickled, coaxing him around. Tickle tickle. Look over here. "C'mere." Prowl glanced at him, and Smokescreen lunged in to plant a smooch on the corner of his mouth. It was overdone and not even remotely serious. "Gotcha!"

A breathless laugh popped out before it could be stifled, and Prowl hunched in on himself, unable to wipe away the smile this time. His optics sparkled, the flustered processor behind them too overwhelmed by emotion to be anything but pleased. It was the happiest Smokescreen had ever seen him allow himself to be.

The gambler couldn't stop grinning. He could do this hours.

Across the medbay, four Autobots pretended they didn't see a thing. Everyone would know by the end of the night. Smokescreen honestly didn't give a scrap, and Prowl was too busy shyly collecting his next kiss to even care what anyone else thought.

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**_[ A/N:_**_Next chapter's sex, so if you just want a fluffy fic, this works as an ending.__**]**_


	7. Pt 7

**Title: ** Playing the Long Odds

**Warning: **Autobots. Awkward. _ and sticky sex.

**Rating: ** R

**Continuity: **G1

**Characters: **Autobots, Smokescreen, Prowl

**Disclaimer: **The theatre doesn't own the script or actors.

**Motivation (Prompt): **"Nervous _ Prowl with a crush, and _." Commission by DisplacedNoble.

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**[* * * * *]**

**Part Seven **

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Smokescreen was losing. Was he ever losing. The tales of his many losses would be retold in this hall for years to come. The profane language he'd used while going down in flames was already being laughed at. The winners were not sympathetic folk. They were ruthless, cunning foes who were merciless in defeating him again and again.

Across the hall, Prowl looked up from patiently explaining the Autobot Cause for the fifth time. "Are you sure you are fine?" he asked through their commlinks.

"I'm getting my aft kicked by **grannies**. This is great!" Out loud, he snarled, "To the Pit with you!" at Ms. Fang, who'd just ripped off a triumphant cackle.

"Bingo!" she called anyway, and Smokescreen slammed his hand on the table. His nearest neighbors echoed him, although their table-slaps didn't shake the furniture. Their language was just as salty, however.

Forget Spike, Carly, and Raoul's age group; Smokescreen's newest favorite demographic was 70 years old and up. They weren't as prone to jumping into danger and some of them didn't change their minds easily, but they had scrap-all to lose by giving their opinions and talking bluntly about the past. He'd rooted out more on how the USA treated veterans, minorities, and poor people through sitting down at this table than he'd ever found through talking with politicians or academics.

Smokescreen knew social networks. Treating them as ambassadors, guests, and possibly spies meant that the humans kept the Autobots isolated in the upper tiers of their social strata. That severely limited the scope of information available. Finding a chink in the humans' network opened up a new realm of possibilities for gathering information, and SpecOps had been scouting for new sources since their old ones began running dry. It wouldn't surprise Smokescreen in the slightest if Prowl had combined business and pleasure by bringing him here for a date. No denying that he was having fun, but he was forging ties to insiders, here.

Well, the gambler was following precedent on that. Bumblebee had brought the Witwickys into the Autobot circle originally because Bumblebee was a friendly mech - but also because he was SpecOps. Infiltrators recognized a resource when it wanted to be friends. Now the Witwickys were Earth Ambassadors, and they were too high-up to be helpful with accessing ground-level information on Earth. Raoul had been an absolute fountain of that when Tracks first found him, but long-time exposure had made him too well-known to really be the lowkey operative the Autobots needed. Astoria, of course, was a total bubble-headed woman who shrewdly juggled high society and CEO duties, feeding the Autobots everything they needed to know about world business and the upper class. She had half the flyers in the _Ark_ wrapped around her manicured little finger. The Aerialbots hadn't even known what hit them before frilly doom nailed their wings to the wall, giggling and flirting the whole time.

She was older, now. More responsible, and more cautious about the stunts she pulled. Raoul was much the same. Powerglide and Tracks worried about how age would affect them. Bumblebee had graduated to full-blown concern when Sparkplug had his first heart attack. Age didn't take long to pile up on humans, and it changed them so quickly that even Cybertronians might not be able to keep up with the transformation.

Smokescreen needed to pull the concerned parties aside and tell them not to worry. From what he'd seen tonight, elderly humans were the toughest bunch of busybodies this side of the Milky Way. The Autobots' friends might change, but scrambling to catch up was going to be fun. The part that Smokescreen was looking forward to was when the humans were the most mature people in the _Ark_. Tracks and Powerglide were going to have babysitters, and he was going to laugh himself sick at them.

Cybertronians lived an astoundingly long time, but they matured at a correspondingly glacial pace. He'd felt like a newbuild since he'd come inside the Bingo hall tonight.

It didn't help that he swore they could smell his relative youth. He was well over a thousand times the age of the oldest human's here, and yet they'd been schooling his young aft since he'd arrived. He'd lost fifteen games, which he could handle. What he couldn't was being told 26 different solutions to the war with the Decepticons and being stuck into three moral dilemmas. He'd finally just started directing the ethics questions toward Prowl, because Prowl actually enjoyed arguing all night about that kind of stuff.

This was the best kind of date, in his opinion: present together, talking and sharing anything that came up, but basically doing their own things. Prowl's thing just happened to be more business-like than Smokescreen's. On the surface, that was, but Smokescreen didn't count gambling as work unless there were other things he should be doing.

Even as he joined the table in setting up the next game, he could hear the group of men and women gathered around Prowl agreeing on something. Black-and-white doors bobbed, although the tactician only seemed gravely interested in whatever was being talked about.

"What're they on about now?" he asked over the commlink.

Prowl's voice was a trifle unsettled. "They asked about attempts at treaties. I told them about Passing Meteor Ceasefire, and they are saying things I am having a difficult time disagreeing with."

"Like what?" Passing Meteor Ceasefire, what had that been? Duh, right. A passing meteor had put Cybertron at risk, and the war had screeched to a halt to deal with the threat. It'd promptly restarted when Megatron got angry at a phrase in Optimus Prime's victory announcement, and the Prime had, in turn, been offended by the tone of Megatron's enraged rebuttal of the announcement. The speeches had bounced back and forth for about a day before the factions just went back to shooting at each other.

"_'__Kids these days.'_" Prowl paused to answer a question, and the tsk-tsking resumed around him. "Hmm. _'Toddlers fighting over a toy.'_ I cannot - it seems rude to compare a war over planetary control to children bickering over a toy, but from what I have seen of juvenile delinquents in this neighborhood, given sufficient weaponry, Megatron's behavior does bear a striking resemblance to that of a child throwing a tantrum."

The careful lack of comment on Optimus Prime's behavior in return was noted. Smokescreen grinned, then groaned as Mr. Jackson got a square. "Slag me, I'm going to lose again."

"You could give up for the night."

"And get stuck with your lot? Pfft, no thanks."

Resignation seeped through Smokescreen's commlink in the form of Prowl's voice. "They are informing me that I should put Megatron and Optimus Prime in a 'time out' in separate corners. If only I could."

"I think that's called 'prison' when the brats are grown up and punching each other for real, and we tried that. The 'Cons just broke him out again." They hadn't tried sticking the Prime in prison at the same time, but that whacko group of neutrals had jailed him at one point. The war had gone on without the Prime. If anything, Megatron had attacked more, sensing an advantage as Ultra Magnus and Prowl tried to fill the Prime's tire tracks. The Autobots hadn't been doing too well until the Prime returned, having recruited the neutrals to the Cause and brought them in as reinforcements. Smokescreen shook his head at the memory and put down a marker on his Bingo card. "Tell them about Starscream. That'll distract them."

"I do not know how to even begin."

"Once upon a time, there was a crazy powerhungry fragger who decided it'd be a bright idea to make a backstabbing madmech his second-in-command…" Considering silence came from the open comm. channel, weightier than empty white noise. Smokescreen shook his head and glared at his card. How could he be losing this bad? How?

Whatever Prowl came up with to fend off the well-meaning hoard, it lasted half an hour before Smokescreen's audios picked up the plaintive whine of an engine. He'd tuned them to pick it out of the background chatter of the Bingo hall when it hit a specific pitch, and it just had. "Excuse me," he said, pushing up from the floor. He'd been sitting cross-legged for over an hour, and envious glares from the old biddies as he unfolded made him feel better about losing his petty cash to them.

He made sure to put an extra dose of smugness in his walk. That's right, envy him for his body! Since, uh, they'd kicked his tires from one end of this hall to the other in game. He didn't have much else going for him but his body.

At least he could be sure _somebody_ here appreciated him for more than easy money. "Alright, folks, lay off my panda car," Smokescreen said as he came up behind Prowl. He knelt and put one hand on the base joint of a black-and-white door. He set the other on Prowl's lower back, sliding it forward and around the tactician's waist until Smokescreen curled around his partner from behind, chin on his shoulder and charming smile in place. "No more matchmaking. He's taken."

The distressed engine noise dropped, downshifting to a flustered putter. Disconcerted but relieved, Prowl didn't lean into his embrace so much as try to disappear into it. He stayed stiffly composed, but his doors flexed back into Smokescreen as if to hide. Only people who knew him would see how unsettled he was.

People who knew him, and Ms. Garcia of the ex-military single son. "He's a lovely man," she said despite Smokescreen's looming presence. "Open, eh?" Was that a wink? That was a wink. Primus deal them luck.

"I am sure he is a good man," Prowl said tactfully while pinging Smokescreen for help. Only one tactic had worked to discourage the continued attempts at setting him up with nice young(ish) humans, and desperation outpaced his pride. Manners had him cornered. He just didn't know how to politely dodge matchmakers. It wasn't a skill he'd ever had to develop.

Smokescreen winked back at Ms. Garcia, who he swore was doing this on purpose. Seriously, he liked these people. Old humans were his favorite.

"Nice or not, this one's still mine. Go get another Autobot." The open claim earned him a pleased, embarrassed squirm from the mech in his arms, but he wasn't done yet.

Shifting around, he freed a hand to turn Prowl's face toward him and leaned in. The halfsparked protest died unsaid, and blue optics dimmed to barely a glimmer as Smokescreen's lips brushed metal. Prowl's mouth moved, either whispering something or just unable to stay still under the gentle pressure easing across his lips. That would have been enough to stop the matchmaking attempts, but where was the fun in that? Smokescreen tipped his head and covered Prowl's mouth with his own, matching movement with movement until there was nothing but following the motion, lips shaping to lips, warm metal pressed to metal that followed and tingled faintly with the beginnings of raised charge.

The hand now cupped around the back of Prowl's neck tightened a smidgeon, and Smokescreen opened his vents to increase circulation. Was it getting hot in here, or was that him? Slight pressure tested the kiss as if asking if Prowl could lead, too, and Smokescreen gave way. Prowl pressed in to take up the slack, guided by his hand or chasing his mouth. Or both, because both was good. His mouth curved under the returned kiss, and the briefest hint of hot moisture licked out to trace Prowl's upper lip, a teasing dip into something less chaste.

By the time the gambler drew back, Prowl's fans were whirring at high speed. The stoic expression had melted into a vacant, not-quite-there look. The way his optics reset in dim flickers didn't help, and Prowl seemed totally unaware of the way he'd turned almost into Smokescreen's lap while chasing after the last of that kiss.

Smokescreen had an armful of heated armor clinging to him. It was giving him ideas. They'd had their fun, but the rating on this outing was edging past the 'public spectacle' setting. Time to make their escape.

"Okay," he murmured as his thumb pet the arch of Prowl's cheek, "I think we should probably get out of here. That's the third time, and it's safe to say that they've figured us out. Also," he added as Prowl came back to himself, "they're all watching."

Optics snapped wide, and Prowl's neck creaked alarmingly as his head whipped about.

"You two are so cute," one of the Bingo players remarked. "L'amore!"

"I remember being in love," his neighbor agreed. "Course, back in our day, snogging like that'd get you a hiding if her daddy caught ya."

"Whaddya mean, 'back in our day'? I'll tear a strip off any boy who lays a hand on my Sofia."

"Dear, she's 48 years old."

"So?!"

Behold the supremely self-conscious Prowl. Not a rare sight after a kiss, but the current specimen was a camera away from combusting. Smokescreen prudently let him go, although he really wanted to hug him close.

He stood aside as Prowl retreated into stiff formality. The group he'd been talking to took the sudden clipped goodbyes and wooden expression in stride, good-naturedly waving their alien visitors on their way. Smokescreen saluted Ms. Garcia and her cronies. It earned him a glare from Prowl when the tactician caught them exchanging suggestive grins, but Smokescreen had no shame.

He sauntered out the door to elderly folk laughing and catcalling that _they_ knew what those 'bots were leaving to do, see if they didn't. The polite goodbyes cut short, and Prowl hurried out soon after.

Compared to the busy Bingo hall, the road was quiet. That didn't say much about actual driving conditions. Seattle at 8 PM was depressingly similar to the crush of traffic in downtown Praxus. The two Datsuns endured the traffic jams with the patience of people who'd lived through worse. Smokescreen drifted into Prowl's wake automatically, taking advantage of the black-and-white cutting a hole through traffic. Most drivers respected police decals. The ones who didn't got their license plate numbers radioed in to Seattle Dispatch.

It was about a four and a half hour drive home. The two Autobots settled in for the drive. Except for the occasional comment on nocturnal wildlife, animal or otherwise, they fell into a comfortable silence. This was the homestretch, the drive every Autobot knew by spark. Sideswipe claimed he could make this drive blinded, sensor-dead, and overcharged. Rumor had it that Jazz had actually proven that possible. Tire memory was strong.

A lot of mechs didn't talk while they drove. Driving time was for thinking. There was something about hitting the open road that triggered a background hum in Autobots with vehicle altmodes. Stunt drives and racing were good for physical challenges, focusing on the body to turn off the mind, and city driving was the best time for companionable chattering, but highways were tedious. Mechs didn't need to think about it. It was hypnotic, sometimes: the rhythm of an engine humming in the same gear, easing off acceleration instead of braking, slowly pushing back up to the speed limit. There was no gearshifting or spurts of speed to break up the drive.

Road etiquette depended on the group, but generally if a mech was quiet, others respected the silence.

So breaking that silence was odd. Smokescreen stopped trailing behind and moved up to ride Prowl's bumper, and the cop car sped up for a moment from the surprise. "Smokescreen?"

"Detour, panda car." His front bumper tinked against Prowl's rear bar. "Take the track turn-off." He nuzzled up close, letting their metal scrape as the road bumped by under them. "But if you do? Just keep in mind that I have every intention of chasing you down for nefarious purposes, copper. I'm gonna **get** you." He added an extra rev, nudging Prowl forward. "Don't have to do it. I'm just warning you what's going to happen if you do."

Prowl took the turn-off.

He did not, Smokescreen noticed, speed up. If anything, he slowed to rest against Smokescreen's grill as the gambler tried to back off to give him room to drive. The road to the track was uneven. Metal squealed. White and blue looked good scraped into black paint, and he was sure the black paint transfers looked positively sinful against his bright colors in return. The idea of adding more scrapes had his engine running hot even though they were driving under the speed limit, now.

Smokescreen rolled to a stop once they reached the track, allowing Prowl to take to the track alone, but his engine downshifted into an eager growl.

A straining rev answered him. Stark black and white in his headlights, the other Datsun jerked as acceleration met brakes. "How do you - how should I - " Nice to know he wasn't the only one excited by this. Prowl's calm voice was belied by the way he fumbled for words, and the sound of his motor kept climbing. "What would you like me to do?"

"Drive," Smokescreen snarled, headlights bright and locked on. "Drive until I catch you, because I'm **going** to catch you, and then I'm going to 'face you until your sirens go off. So if you want to call this off, do it now, or **drive**."

Dirt sprayed as Prowl took off. Giving him a ten-second headstart took willpower Smokescreen wasn't even sure he had until he called on it. His grill dipped near to the ground, hunger pushing him forward against self-control. Brakes screeped against his axles, and it was a delicious pain. Restraint felt so good. It spiced the anticipation.

Oh, did he want this. He'd wanted this for a while, but hearing the pounding thunder of Prowl's engine as he fled turned desire to molten lust. The date had been great, it'd been fun, but it'd been nothing different from what they did together as friends. This, however. This was unleashing a physical pressure, a kindled flame now fanned into a wild burn. This was lighting the fuse. This was releasing tension that had been mounting all night. All month, maybe.

The count reached ten, and Smokescreen tore out onto the track.

Technically, Prowl was the faster mech. However, he drove cautiously on the dark track. Smokescreen drove recklessly, headlights warning the other Datsun of his approach, and Prowl's lightbar cycled faster as the black-and-white took the chase up a notch. He hadn't been trying very hard to stay out of reach before, but he was used to being the one doing the chasing. He hadn't known what it'd feel like to angle his side mirrors and see headlights bearing down him, hear the aggression of a pursuer intent on catching him, feel Smokescreen race toward him on his scanners. He hadn't had a clue.

The thrill of being chased slid an unexpected shiver through his frame, the icy zap of fear from peaking the crest of a rollercoaster. He was going to go down, he was going to be caught, but what had him speeding up was the sharp edge of uncertainty on the anticipation. Being run down was facing the steep plunge with no way to go back, falling and knowing he couldn't stop. He wasn't the one in control this time. He didn't know where he was being herded or when the chase would end, only that his only option was to drive until he was caught.

The inevitability of gravity tangled with the excitement of the ride, and his lack of control amped excitement up past anything resembling fear. Arousal had his radiator pumping hot coolant desperately past fans already on their highest setting. His fuel pump hiccupped once before fully integrating with his engine pistons, throwing him wholesale into the game.

It didn't feel like a game. It felt like a real pursuit: cat-and-mouse, Seeker-and-minibot. Prowl's motor growled challenge as he accelerated. Red and blue lights flashed defiance.

He would not be easy prey, but dear Primus on Cybertron did he want to be caught. This glitchmouse wanted to be the prize.

Smokescreen was on his bumper, right there with him. He'd known Prowl wanted to be the one being sought, he'd gotten this idea directly from their talks on what they wanted from their relationship, but he'd had no idea what a turn-on it was to turn the tables. They put so much effort into negating their respective ranks that seizing power like this was _smoking hot_. His hood could have seared human skin, his systems were running so heated.

He felt powerful. He felt strangely savage, the need to pursue that fleeing bumper boiling in the primitive substructure of his CPU where thought met body, and hunger drained everything out of the forefront of his thoughts but the ready lights from his interface array. His valve primed, slick and flexing deep inside him, and the rough road was _not_ helping with that. There were mechs who disabled their shock absorbers to overload while driving off-road, and right this moment, he thought the idea had merit.

But more than that, more than the illicit kick of being in the one in control, the deep-seated need to _win_ looped around his spark in a hangman's rope dangling him by greed. It urged him to go faster, to catch, to claim. It called to his gambling addiction in the sweetest way, promising the euphoric pleasure high of winning.

Smokescreen had worked hard to tame his need to play, but the addiction would always be there. Letting it loose turned the lust into a needier, more selfish hunger. It felt familiar and forbidden in one. This was sanctioned, but it felt illegal.

The track twisted back on itself and then straightened, letting him close in before Prowl's greater speed opened the distance again. Flooring it as he pursued felt like dealing out one more hand of cards after he'd gone over his credit limit, but it tasted of hustling a newbie. They were driving headlong into double-or-nothing territory where the risk of going too far weighed against the payoff of going just far enough. The stakes were high, and Smokescreen wasn't above cheating.

That was half the fun of playing.

Prowl swung around the next bend, blue and red bright in the night, and Smokescreen cut his headlights. Transforming, he flung out a leg and dug a furrow in the dirt to stop. Red and blue filtered through the trees, fleeing down the track. Between the trees and the lack of headlights, Prowl wouldn't be able to get a fix on his location if he moved fast. Grinning, Smokescreen sprinted back down the track and off into the forest.

Hey, he hadn't said how he'd catch Prowl, just that he'd catch him.

His optic filters twinged in the low light of weak autumn moonlight, but he could see enough to avoid most of the trees, the brush pile, and one of Red Alert's security cameras as he bounded up the hill. The track came back around on the other side. Hopefully, Prowl was too busy looking backward to be listening for someone coming down hill pulling plants and sticks out of his ankle tires. The gambler trotted the rest of the way to the track and shifted into his altmode facing the opposite direction just as blue and red flashed into sight.

A wild laugh broke out of him, and Smokescreen switched on his headlights. "Hello there, handsome."

The wordless exclamation of surprise Prowl made was worth the leaves crunched up in his undercarriage. Sirens blipped but cut off. Brakes squealed.

Two Datsuns faced each other on the road, headlights staring each other down. Smokescreen had always known their vehicle model looked good, but disheveled and coated in dust, lower paneling dingy while the rest shone in the light? That threw fuel on the fire. Black and white looked good enough to grab, and something about those police decals had his valve expanding and contracting, his spike ready to pressurize. It was the reversal of authority, or maybe just the exertion of the chase itself, but he'd never before wanted to pounce Prowl as much as he did right then.

His engine revved loud in half-challenge and half-threat. Lunging against his parking brake, the brightly-colored Datsun mock-charged.

Prowl startled backward, siren whooping. It was a sign of how excited he was that a mech who could stay dead silent through a Decepticon attack was thoroughly a-twitter from this. Windshield wipers flicked frantically, and his front tires twitched.

Cop car and racer faced off, and the normal dynamics didn't apply. Smokescreen lunged again, back tires spinning faster and throwing up a spray of dirt behind him. His motor howled like a wolf on the hunt.

And, like prey, Prowl ran. Small stone spat onto Smokescreen's hood as the tactician threw himself into reverse, twisting through a turn too tight for a car that didn't have the ability to turn its tires independently. Smokescreen accelerated right back into the chase the second he got around, and Prowl took off with his pursuer's front grill riding his bumper.

The roar of engines filled the night again. Anyone listening could hear two cars fighting to open up the throttle on a track meant to challenge them. They had to brake heavily to make the curves, and Prowl clawed for the speed to outrun Smokescreen's greater experience on this particular road. Their engines ran hot, overheat warnings lighting up both their dashes, but their systems weren't pushed to that point because of mere driving. The course was moderately difficult, more so in the dark like this, but a more knowledgeable listener could hear the difference between a car and an Autobot.

Those engines weren't thundering because of the race.

The black-and-white fled, ahead by speed and clever maneuvers to block his pursuer. Engine noise tore through the quiet forest, chased and chasing, and the wildlife stayed out of their way. When Prowl flew by, everything about him was a flashing red and blue sign that this was a mech revved up and ready. His lights cycled too fast, his engine ran high and excited, and he was all over the road, swerving here and there as Smokescreen dogged his tracks. It was meant to block him, to prevent him from passing or getting up alongside to force Prowl off the road, but Smokescreen beeped his horn every time that bumper wagged. Prowl was being a little tease, playing, and Smokescreen was delighted by the show.

Turned on and jittery from nerves, Prowl was all but saying, _"Come and get me."_

The Autobots wouldn't recognize their Second-in-Command right now. This was a Prowl most of them had never seen: reacting instead of thinking, unrestrained by his battle computer. A few, very select mechs knew this side of him existed. They would likely be hooting encouragement from the sidelines if they could see him now, but they couldn't, so they didn't. Whatever was happening in front of Red Alert's security monitors right now didn't count.

Smokescreen downshifted, tires gripping the road as he rounded a corner, sending a sheet of gravel and dirt flying from the sudden acceleration afterward. His gears ground as he shifted up, and ahead of him, that bumper weaved. Prowl the flirt. Who knew?

The chase had to end, however, and Smokescreen surged into rootmode as Prowl pulled ahead on a straight. Two running strides off the road, a leaping hurdle over the gulch, and he tumbled onto the track on the other side of the curve.

Prowl saw him coming but accelerated anyway, aiming to get past before the gambler regained his feet.

Smokescreen didn't even try. He ducked his head and tucked his doors in to take the tumble in a running stride that flung him forward in a dive. He landed on top of the fleeing Datsun in a crash of metal.

Sirens bleeped in surprise, and Smokescreen grinned in triumph as his knees dragged through the dirt. His arms were full of black-and-white plating, red and blue flashing lights, and wildly spinning tires that were going nowhere. He had no intention of letting go. "Gotcha!"

Prowl's engine thrummed protest, but the kneeling mech had his arms around him, now. Victory was his! With one heave, Smokescreen took the tactician's back tires off the ground, and he sat back on his heels as he hauled back on the struggling mech. That tail end got plopped in his lap. Prowl immediately threw his front wheels into play, but Smokescreen's hands clamped onto the rim of his wheel wells to haul him back into place as soon as he dragged himself forward. He was well and truly caught.

Bent over, chest pressed to Prowl's roof, Smokescreen repeated, "Gotcha." This time it wasn't a triumphant crow. This time it came out a throaty purr, and he pressed a kiss where windshield met roof. "Give up, panda car. I caught you."

"That you have." Prowl sounded out of breath. His ventilation system couldn't seem to keep air in him. Steam billowed out of his vents. "What do you plan to do now that you have caught me?" Windshield wipers flipped, and his front tires wriggled back and forth. His attempts to escape were less than convincing.

"I was planning on 'facing you, right here. Right now." Smokescreen kissed the seam again, working his hands under Prowl's sides until he found something to make those windshield wipers flip nonstop. Ooo, that felt tweakable. Static hissed softly from Prowl's vocalizer, and the gambler caressed the transformation joint he'd found. He spread his knees apart, pushing the outside of his knees against the inside of back tires. They spun uselessly on air as he found another part to tweak.

"That seems fair." How Prowl could keep his voice impassive one moment and let out a little whimper like that the next was one of life's great mysteries. Attempting to wriggle further into Smokescreen's hands did nothing but squirm his tail end across the gambler's thighs.

The lower edge of the Smokescreen's interface panel was being assaulted by the upper edge of Prowl's back bumper, and Smokescreen bucked his hips up off his heels to push against it. Prowl's altmode didn't have a spoiler like his. He'd never been more aware of that lack.

"Tell me to stop," he said in low groan as his panels retracted. His spike pressurized. It slid up the perfect slope of Prowl's rear window, bumping over the trunk and slipping over glass that felt astonishingly cold against his underside. "Tell me to stop, and I will." He curled over the mech in his lap and pressed the side of his helm to Prowl's roof, optics squinted from the sheer _intensity_ of cold autumn air, cool glass, and hot, living metal.

Primus must have answered his prayer's for luck tonight. He'd wanted this. Earth was some kind of bizarre spike-tease with its roads full of gorgeous vehicles that weren't really mechs but fragging _Pit_ did they look good, and now here he was with one of the sexiest models available held in his arms. His hips gave an involuntary thrust, grinding the base of his spike against Prowl's back end. Trapped between his midriff and Prowl's window, the pressure on his spike was just - Primus, he could get off like this. Just like this.

Their frametypes were the same, but Prowl made their altmode look so good. Low-slung and sleek, with that paintjob dirtied up by the chase and his side mirrors angling every which way to watch him. His headlights were shifting as much as his front wheels, and his police lights flashed red and blue through the forest. Smokescreen lifted his head and mouthed that tempting lightbar. It tasted like glass and soap and the peculiar, almost indiscernible flavor of an excited energy field. He nibbled, tasting the charge racing through circuitry and powering the lovely lightshow.

It was lovely because there was no question when he hit the mark. The lights cycled faster. Better yet, tiny chirps and weebles kept leaking from Prowl's sirens as he found hot spots to tweak and nip. He'd be remembering those for later.

Freeing one hand from molesting Prowl's undercarriage, the gambler smoothed the palm over the open expanse of his hood. There was an undeniable, magnetic need to pet that hood in long, smooth strokes. It was just so wide. So slagging aerodynamic, like speed personified. This was a hood that could cut through air like an energon sword through rubber.

He licked along Prowl's lightbar, biting the corner as his he thrust again. His spike slid over hot metal and up cool glass. The lone back window wiper suddenly flicked across the glass, and he groaned at the slight, stinging slap against the side of his spike. "You okay?"

"I - I am, yes. I am very well. I am - " Prowl made a small noise of distress as his window wiper flipped twice in a row, beating Smokescreen's spike. "Please do not stop, I did not mean - I am not trying to - "

"Shhhh," he crooned into white metal, kissing across to work on where roof met windshield. His tongue traced the seal. He closed his teeth and raked them back the other direction. That disobedient window wiper whapped him, and his hips jerked every time, but not because it hurt. At least, it didn't hurt any more than someone spanking his aft to get him to go faster or harder. Which he was more than willing to do, but Prowl wouldn't get anything from him frotting against his trunk.

His fingers probed under Prowl's door, seeking access. "Open for me?"

"I...certainly." Both doors clicked open, windows rolling down on automatic. "I apologize if I - that is, I am not precisely sure how to do this. I, ah, am aware of the theory, but you will have to tell me what to do." Anxiety sputtered his engine.

Smokescreen hummed amusement against Prowl's lightbar, because the thing was as fun to play with as he'd imagined. He nuzzled it as his hand dipped into his lover's - they were definitely lovers now, this wasn't even remotely chaste anymore - driver's side door. "Haven't done it in alt before, huh? You've been missing out. Lemme treat you, mech." This was going to be fun. Not that it wasn't already, but tripping someone's breakers was always a rush.

Prowl wasn't as certain about how much fun this would be for Smokescreen. "But you are not, um. In. In…me." Mirrors and tires squirmed as embarrassment flattened arousal for a moment. "You do not have to - "

"Trust me, Prowl. I'm getting plenty back here." He rolled his hips up in illustration, and Prowl's wiper beat at him rapidly. If he couldn't have felt the heat radiating onto his knees from the mech's engine, he might have thought it was fear. As it was, Prowl shifted into reverse and backed up further into his lap in an awkward, endearing attempt to match his rhythm.

He brought his other hand up and firmly gripped Prowl by the doorframe, controlling the clumsy rocking. "Like this," he murmured, pulling him back into the slow thrust and grind of his spike. Bent over to wrap around him like this, Smokescreen could feel Prowl hesitate, following his guidance for a minute before giving it a try.

His fans picked up. "Mmmnn. Good. That's - that's good. You keep that up, and I'm not going to last long," Smokescreen said, words thick in his throat. Prowl was the sweetest armful of mech he'd held in a long while, so unexpectedly plaint and eager to please that it was blowing his mind.

"Is that bad?" Prowl asked. His voice was completely serious, but he gave his front wheels an experimental half-turn as he spoke.

Tentative or not, the move made Smokescreen exhale heavily across his roof. Blue optics dimmed, and the gambler's teeth scraped across Prowl's lightbar as he shuddered overtop of the mech. Back that aft up. Set on his thighs this way, Prowl had just ground back against his spike in an extremely lewd manner. It shot pleasure across his sensor network, and then Prowl did it _again_, slower, and guhhhh. He caught on fast for someone who claimed he hadn't done this before.

Then again, some things were instinct.

Smokescreen breathed deep for a moment. "N-no. No, not really, that's fine with me," more than fine, spectacular, "but I'm a one-shot spike mech. It'll take me most of the night to pressurize again if we go this route."

"Do you want to finish like this?" A careful, considerate question from an incredible mech whom Smokescreen wanted to frag to exhaustion. What kind of question was that to ask while rocking back onto a spike? Of course he wanted to finish like this!

Although not quite. This was nice, this was very nice indeed, but it was missing something. "Y'know, I want less about me and more about you. I was about to show you a good time before you took up riding lessons." He let go of Prowl's doorframes. He'd just been holding on at this point anyway as Prowl matched his pace, so his hands could be put to better use.

The thing about their particular frametype, about Praxian frametypes in general but their model specifically, was that their interior space was a buffer zone. They had a limited crumple zone in the front where essential components took up the space under their hoods. Their drivetrain was a line-up of engine, fuel pump, CPU, spark chamber, fuel processing plant, and finally, the fuel tank itself. If a Decepticon went after them while they were in altmode, the glitch would ram them head-on or gut their undercarriages. Those were the vulnerable target areas. The cargo area on top of their drivetrain protected their sparks from aerial attacks, and their doors and tail ends carried their heaviest armor. The humans had turned that cargo hold into a seating area, but it still functioned as a protective buffer.

Frametypes like Mirage sacrificed that cargo area in order to fit in a larger front crumple zone and minimize external armor. The noblemech could handle flips, head-on crashes, and even wrecking his drivetrain, and he'd still limp away from critical damage for a Praxian frame. He was built for speed and dealt best with speed-related injuries, lending well to hit-and-run tactics and doing poorly in pitched battle, whereas Smokescreen could tackle close combat as long as his tires stayed on the ground.

Losing the cargo area made Mirage vulnerable how Praxians weren't. He had an Earth-style driver's cockpit, but it was actually camouflage for his spark chamber. That was why Decepticons typically targeted his frametype from the air, firing downward. His spark was easy to access in his vehicle form.

An excellent benefit during times like these, but Praxian frametypes had their own advantages.

Smokescreen wormed his fingers in from either side, teasing into Prowl's seat wells. Every Autobot had rules governing their interior space. Mirage never carried passengers, for instance, and the three Praxians on Earth had an ironclad _'no kicking'_ rule for all passengers. Their entire seating area was thin disguise over sensitive components. The seat wells sat squarely around in their spark chambers, the sides and ends mere upholstery away from direct contact.

The one time Sparkplug had stomped the pedals in Bluestreak, the gunner had nearly ejected the man out his driver-side door in the middle of an intersection. No Autobot would have blamed him.

Prowl's doors juddered visibly when the gambler reached bottom. Smokescreen chuckled and pressed the pedals in a little pattern, easing another finger in to set delicately in on each one. Deep in the passenger seat well, his fingers crooked to rub over hidden sensors under the upholstery. Prowl's engine skipped as his fuel pump fell out of sync and started hammering. This was a different kind of acceleration happening here, and the Datsun shuddered to the rhythm of fingertips plunging in and out of tight holes. Smokescreen gave his fingers a twist, scoring his knuckle joints against the walls of the seat wells, and his hands' sped up with every thrust.

His own spark swelled in sympathy, and he plastered himself to Prowl's roof to soak in the tiny reactions his fingers were coaxing out. Windshield wipers flicked, yes, and Prowl's tires kept jerking in the dirt, but vehicle mode cues could sometimes be hard to catch. They had to be watched for. The way black-and-white plating flared when he stroked sensitive walls was one such cue, as was the quiet, quick in-vents as his fingers nudged the end of seat wells. Mashing pedals to the floor and knuckling over circuit-packed spark casing got a shrill squawk of sirens.

Right there, huh? _Somebody_ liked it fast and rough. He increased pressure and upped the pace. His index fingers thrust in every couple strokes to massage a tiny circle against the inside corners of the seat wells, heavy enough to bounce Prowl down on his front tires, and the tiny, breathy moan that earned made Smokescreen's spike jump. More of that. He wanted to hear more of Prowl losing control. He wanted to make Prowl drown in sensor input until that rusted battle computer shut up or shut down.

He straightened his elbows and really put his shoulders into it.

The tactician cut off most of the noises leaking out of his vocalizer, but he got one whimper and a loud, panting spill of vowels before the pressure became finally crossed a line. The friction had Smokescreen's fingertips burning hot by now, anyway.

"A~ah. Smokescr**een!** That - too much," Prowl got out after a particularly hard push, and Smokescreen gladly backed off.

The fingers inside Prowl eased down to a tickling slide that only lightly stimulated sensors rarely touched by outside elements. Overcharged circuitry protested this change instantly. Prowl's spark chamber pinged irritated warnings about too much energy, connect immediately, provide outlet, and Smokescreen could almost hear them bombard the tactician's CPU. He smiled against Prowl's lightbar as the Datsun in his arms began squirming after his fingers, doors bumping the backs of his hands as they closed against his wrists.

Nonverbal hints weren't working. Prowl shut his doors further, attempting to urge those far too clever hands onward, but Smokescreen had no mercy. He kept feathering tormenting fingertips into his seat well. That was doing things to Prowl that he couldn't process.

He writhed as much as a car could, but pure physical input broke his thoughts apart. It was like trying to operate through a severe wound, only impossibly more pleasant. Smokescreen was finger-fragging his spark chamber, making his mind sob and beg for more instead of think, and he didn't understand how something so frustrating could feel so amazing.

He decided it didn't matter. "Harder, please," he said. Except for the slightly shuddery quality to his voice, he sounded as if he was asking for a report.

That just wouldn't do. "Harder, you say? I can do that." Smokescreen's fingers curled to slide under Prowl's seats, seeking a different set of sensors this time. A blip of sirens told him he'd found it. Prowl's interface array had just switched to high gear, and things had just got real.

He took his time petting the floor mats that hid the top of Prowl's pelvic span. The heat already radiating from the seat wells was soon mingling with the heat from fired-up interface equipment. The tips of his thumbs kneaded at the gear mound, prompting a _thud_ from a spike pressurizing against a locked panel. Somewhere under the back seat, Prowl's valve restlessly cinched down on nothing, lubing up for a frag it wasn't getting. The overflow of charge from his aroused spark fed into online circuitry, climbing higher from the suggestion of pressure against outer panels but given none of the friction it craved to work to overload.

An entire interface array of active, yearning sensors, and here Prowl was in vehicle mode. But folded so close together inside his altmode like this, a spark overload would trip his interface array in the backwash of energy. That secondary overload was the great part about their frametype.

In the meantime, the build-up would be torture. Prowl's spike couldn't extend, and his valve clenched in helpless need. Pressure sensors waited, primed and pleading for use as charge rose in crackling surges from fingers that _weren't touching them_.

Smokescreen bent over Prowl enough to hear the frustrated complaints whining from his engine, and he smirked. That was more like it. With a gratified sigh, he popped his fingers out from under the seats and went back to finger-fragging Prowl's seat wells, picking up the rhythm where he'd left off: too slow and far too gentle. Ghosting whispers over upholstery lit Prowl red-hot and thrumming in his lap. Another whine and a wriggle encouraged him to go harder, faster, and self-satisfaction spread his smirk wide.

He lifted up off his heels and rolled his hips into the wriggling. Prowl went absolutely still.

"You get it?" Smokescreen asked, a rough burr of lust filling his voice and turning his HUD yellow with ready lights.

Prowl didn't sound any less ragged, despite his dignity. "I believe so. Are you certain you are fine with this? If…if you wish, I can pop my trunk?"

He couldn't help but laugh. "I'm not built like a Supreme. I don't need a bigger hole." The perverted part of his mind did file the idea for later, however. "You worry about getting yours, panda car. I want to see you overload under me." Primus, did he ever.

His fingers thrust in up to the knuckles. Prowl jolted from the force of it, forward against his brakes and then back again, and Smokescreen bucked slowly into the motion. His spike slid into the narrow space between his own midriff and Prowl's back window, and it felt fragging wonderful. Pleasure gripped his tanks, tightening as Prowl figured out that the faster he rocked, the faster Smokescreen rubbed. Every couple of circles, the gambler knocked the tips of his fingers into the ends of the seat wells and raked up the sides, sharp impacts and hard scratches over a spark casing that spat shocks of energy in response.

Smokescreen's fingers felt singed from fiction and charge, but he scrubbed them fast and hard. They could cool off later.

Prowl's outward reactions were small. The roaring rev of his engine betrayed each burst of pleasure vibrating through his spark, but he muffled the grunts and whimpers. His sirens blipped and whooped in quick blurts of noise. His back tires spun helplessly every time Smokescreen mashed his pedals. Charge stripped his networks to bare, writhing circuitry that twined like rope, and like rope, the pleasure was gradually fraying until it would snap and whip bliss through straining systems. He rocked on his front tires, urgently pushing into the fingers scrubbing his spark chamber to a delicious friction burn.

As their pace picked up, Smokescreen's doors rose with the arch in his backstruts, shaking as his hips jerked in an erratic rhythm. His fingers pumped, but he broke the rhythm to squeeze Prowl's seats in his hands. He needed to hold onto something. His fingers shook when he peeled them away to rub into Prowl's seat wells, but he abandoned the effort a second later as streaking, electric bolts of charge shocked through his interface array, pooling at the base of his spike until it throbbed, until the pleasure made even the sensor rings in his valve feel heavy and swollen, ready to burst.

Release broke the winding coil knotting up inside him, and he collapsed over Prowl, every limb stiff and shuddering through the long waves of circuit breakers tripping and resetting. His mouth fell open, his optics went dark, and _oh Primus yes_.

Pleasure spread in a warm, liquid splash through his body. He pulled in deep, slow ventilation cycles, coming down from the peak. His doors fell gradually back to normal. His hip joints ached from the effort, still shaking a bit as he settled back on his heels, and post-overload lethargy bloomed in the wake of the ebbing pleasure. He wanted nothing more than to doze off into a pleasant haze while cuddled around the mech in his arms.

He didn't, however. This wasn't time for recharge, not with his fingers still buried in Prowl's interior, diddling against a spark chamber that demanded more attention. Prowl was making tiny disgruntled noises that weren't words but were full of frustration and begging. They might even be audible more than ten feet away.

Smokescreen pressed the side of his face to the tactician's roof and smiled absently, keeping his optics offline. His fingers started rubbing again. "Hold on, hold on…mmm? You like that?" Rear tires spun fitfully as he pushed the first two fingers on each hand in, kneading quick ovals that thrust and return in a heavy pattern. The tips of his fingers knocked into the ends of the seat wells with every cycle. Stuffing two more fingers in earned a zap as the overcharged, pleasure-gorged spark spat excess energy out along its casing, but that was a price he was willing to pay. "Right there." He bounced the heels of his hands off Prowl's seats, jarring an interface array that had to be screaming for anything, any kind of attention by now.

Prowl tried to say something, but his vocalizer reset into nothing but garbled static. Smokescreen sank in further, making hard, quick rubs in time with the trembling tension locking up Prowl's fans. Windshield wipers quivered wildly, stuck straight up in the air. The tactician's vents blasted in stuttering gasps. Those hitched and stopped as Prowl held his breath, panted it out in bursts, sucked in cool air, and held it again.

"Come on," Smokescreen whispered. His fingertips jammed in and rolled, the tips vigorously massaging the same spot over and over, just _working_ in a rapidfire pulse of pressure.

A gulp of air pulled in against his fans, and Prowl tensed to shaking, riding the knife edge of release. His doors slammed shut on Smokescreen's wrists hard enough to dig into the joint. He made a quiet non-sound, a strong exhale of, "…! Hnnffff…ffff…" that trailed off into his fans stopping entirely.

And then the second overload met the first, a tidal wave of spark-deep pleasure crashing headlong into the backwash as his interface array spasmed and tripped like an echo.

Climax drowned him in the crackling whirlpool of charge bursting free. Circuit breakers snapped into reset throughout his body.

If not for the way he shook to jelly in Smokescreen's lap, the gambler might have thought he'd lost his touch. He could feel Prowl's fuel pump racing between his knees. He shut off his optics and stroked his fingers across hot upholstery, gently drawing out a few more soft noises as Prowl went as limp as a car could.

His fans, when they restarted, whirred at their highest setting to dump all that pent-up heat. Smokescreen wasn't helping with how he was draped across him, but they'd just fragged. He was allowed to snuggle his lover, slag it.

Eventually, he withdrew his hands and blew on the tips of his fingers. They felt somewhat melted. He didn't bother onlining his optics to check.

Hot metal ticked as it cooled. Headlights dimmed. Prowl's lightbar shut off at long last. The forest around them grew convinced the two Autobots were asleep, and wildlife started going about its business again.

Smokescreen's hands took to wandering lazily over black-and-white plating.

Prowl stirred as fingers pinched at his door hinges. Smokescreen did it again, optics still offline and a smile tugging the corner of his mouth. Their doors were armored to the Pit and back, but prickling all over from two overloads in a row, Prowl's transformation joints had to be sensitive right now.

The Datsun in his arms transformed, torso twisting around to put doors against the ground and Prowl's hands on his knees. He smiled and hung on, ending up with Prowl's legs spread open over his thighs and a nicely heated interface array pressed snugly to his own. He bent forward further and snuggled in, fitting his chest under Prowl's and happily pressing his face into the smooth metal of a hood instead of a roof. Nibbling on Prowl's radiator grill didn't get quite the same shiny, immediate reaction as molesting his lightbar had, but the hands on his knees tightened. Smokescreen could adapt.

Tucked up under Prowl, pressed into the dirt but still clamped onto door hinges, his hands moved. Fingers plucked.

A harsh ex-vent that wanted to be a moan sent the forest critters scurrying for home, and then hands seized his helm. Smokescreen let himself be dragged upward and chortled wickedly into the kiss. Prowl's disapproving frown could be felt, and he sniggered once more before busying his lips with better things. Namely, seeing if Prowl tasted as good as he looked. How many licks did it take to get to the center of a Tootsie-Prowl? Time to find out.

One: licking out in a quick flick along the displeased shape of his lover's mouth.

Two: darting teases along now-parted lips, inviting Prowl's tongue to chase his.

Three: actually letting Prowl's tongue find his, the tips slipping together in shock of intimacy and energy fields that tasted of burnt energon and spent lightning.

Oops, he'd bitten down. The world might never know.

The irate tea kettle noises from Prowl's engine turned over into a rattling purr, and Smokescreen wrapped his arms around him to pull him closer. Locked in the kiss, Prowl barely protested the hand abandoning his door hinge. It ran down to the small of his back and yanked, hoisting his aft further into the gambler's lap. Arching up like this might have been painful under any other circumstances, but the charge flooding up his backstruts urged him yet closer.

His helm rolled back as Smokescreen attacked his jaw, laying a trail of kisses up until his helm blocked any more. He made a faint, startled noise at the sudden nip to his neck cables, and the low laughter told him that he was in trouble now.

Oh no. Oh, save him. Whatever would he do?

Arch up further and toss his head to the side to give Smokescreen's mouth free rein, mostly. The other Praxian's hood pressed under his chest, purring vibrations buzzing against him, and Prowl's interface panel spontaneously retracted. He cycled his vents once, and his hand twitched against the back of the blue helm he held. Smokescreen's mouth slid down the side of his neck, and his hand trembled finely as a bundle of wires was singled out to be sucked on.

Prowl shut off his optics and fumbled with his free hand, searching. The hand on his aft ran up over his abdomen to meet him halfway, and he breathed deep as their fingers laced together. He could do this. He was ready, more than ready, and it'd already been so good that he couldn't even imagine this going sour.

He pressed their hands downward and let go once Smokescreen seemed to get the hint. The gambler's hand kept going. Prowl brought his own hand up to wrap around Smokescreen's waist, partly for leverage but also to brace himself. It'd be quick, he hoped. Even if it wasn't, he thought that the rising pleasure would swamp his sensor network.

This was a different sort of pleasure. The hum of energy soaking into him flowed sluggishly, languid and rich as it saturated his circuits. Prowl tipped his head the other way and concentrated on Smokescreen's mouth, the fingers exploring the base of his extended spike and dipping down to introduce themselves to his valve rim. A fluid rush of pleasure followed every touch. Yes, hello, this was the hand that'd finger-fragged his spark to fritzing earlier. Hello. Nice to -

"Holy fragging Primus in the Allspark," Smokescreen said in a high-pitched squeak. "Is this a **seal**?"

What, no, those fingers were supposed to start fragging him directly. No proxy this time. He'd been relaxed and ready for the pain of the seal popping. "Yes." Optics still off, Prowl dropped his chin and determinedly chased Smokescreen's mouth. "Factory seals," he mumbled as he caught slack lips.

They weren't cooperating with his efforts. "But you're older than I am!"

"Mm? Mmhmm." Oh, come _on_. Prowl's hands went up to tug on Smokescreen's chevron, trying to pull him into a kiss. This was not going according to plan - well, as much of one as his pleasure-blitzed tacnet could cobble together on short notice - and a vague sense of annoyance burned through the sleepy, sinking haze he'd been in. He onlined his optics and frowned as Smokescreen drew back to glance down between their bodies. "The pain will be brief. I was hoping I might use at least my valve tonight," he added a tad tartly.

Considering how thoroughly lubricated it currently felt, it was more of a gnawing need than a hope. The hungry flex inside him had been driving him mad while in his altmode, and having his thighs splayed apart this way had woken an empty, pulsing desire that'd made up his mind the moment he transformed. He wanted Smokescreen in him, and he didn't care if it was spike, fingers, or tongue at this point. Just get it inside him, because he was _aching_.

There had been times during his shy, distant observation of this mech that the easy smile and charming, flirtatious manner had made it difficult to sit still. It'd never gotten this bad. The only way Prowl felt he could even manage to sit down at all right now was if he were firmly seated on Smokescreen's spike.

Smokescreen was still distracted, sitting up to staring at the dull seal covering his valve, but he adapted quickly to changing situations. It was something Prowl's battle computer unconditionally approved of, not that it was fully functioning at the moment. Smokescreen reset his optics a few time, shook his head clear, and reached down to wrap a hand around Prowl's extended spike.

"Nngh!" Prowl caught his lower lip between his teeth and ruthlessly cut off a cry. His sirens chirped.

Okay. Change of plans. New strategy: spike overload.

But Smokescreen wasn't just fondling his spike to make him pant and kick. Disapproving optics glared down at him. "Did you do this to yourself?"

Prowl gave him a nonplussed stare in return for the demand. "I…what?"

"This! Did you do this?" A blue thumb stroked over the ragged remnants of the seal that had been over his spike. Prowl's hips jerked from the rough mix of pain and pleasure that churned at the base of his spike. The sensor nodes the seal had been attached to were still sore from glue tearing free as he'd pressurized.

As they were supposed to, so far as he knew. "Yes?"

"Why?!" It was a genuinely distressed question, and Smokescreen slipped out from underneath his legs to kneel between his feet and fuss over the shredded seal. "Primus, that had to hurt. Why didn't you wait?"

This kept getting more confusing. "Wait for what?" he asked cautiously, forcing his voice level despite the pleasure-pain squeezing into a trembling ball in his gut.

"I could've, you know. Helped. It's been a while, but I know how to unseal equipment." Face still twisted in concern, Smokescreen was very, very gently tugging on the bits of seal, peeling the glue off sensors in tiny increments. Every tugging pull was promptly soothed by a half a dozen delicate strokes rubbing the tender nodes. _Tug_-rubrubrubrubrub-_tug_-rubrubrubrubrubrub.

Prowl would have responded, but he seemed to have misplaced his ability to speak. He honestly couldn't tell if Smokescreen was aware of what he was doing, and he wasn't sure he cared. His helm thunked into the dirt, and his vents steamed. The stinging pangs of sealant glue ripping off hyper-sensitive sensors only enflamed the pulsing pleasure climbing his back struts one tug at a time.

It really didn't help that Smokescreen kept talking. It didn't even matter that it was a constant stream of, "Sorry, sorry! Just let me…is that better?" and, "Almost done, hold on, almost got it all." It was background noise in a voice he'd dreamed of for far too long.

His feet scraped the road, tires digging a furrow as his hips rode up. His vocalizer was locked down, but his siren wailed to life.

The last of the seal tore away, and Smokescreen murmured something that Prowl was past actually listening to. If he hadn't been staring sightlessly up at the night sky, he'd have seen the affectionate look the gambler gave him right before ducking his head down to run the flat of his tongue up Prowl's neglected length, lavishing a swirl around the tip.

That ball inside him shook and compressed into a dense, roiling tension that hovered on the verge of exploding. A quick flick of that tongue, and his hands tore into the ground, fingers clawing for a handhold as he fell into white noise and static.

Prowl's mouth opened in a silent cry. Smokescreen couldn't read lips, but he recognized his own name when he saw it.

He leaned forward to look down into fuzzy optics as they reset. "Hey, you." Prowl blinked up at him dumbly. "You still in there?"

"_Mrrzlt._" Clumsy hands got dirt all over his helm, but Smokescreen didn't mind. He let himself be grabbed and dragged into a kiss more passionate than experienced, and that made a lot more sense now.

Their chevrons clinked and scraped against each other. He pushed in, then drew back abruptly to brush the bridges of their noses together. Prowl panted beneath him, open-mouthed, and he took another kiss from that ready mouth before sitting back.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Smokescreen asked quietly. His hand slid down Prowl's interface array to cup over the seal still covering his valve. "It - I don't know why you've waited this long, but we don't have to do anything you don't want to. If you're not into using your valve, that's okay, I'm fine with - "

"No!" Embarrassment flushed through Prowl's fuel lines. "No, I want. I wanted to, ah. I." His doors twitched as he inhaled deeply to calm down, and his voice came out at a measured pace when he continued. "I never wanted to interface before the war, and after becoming…infatuated with you, it was. I just. You." Flustered and a trifled panicked under Smokescreen's expectant look, he couldn't figure out any other way to say it. "I did not want anyone else. I only wanted you."

Smokescreen stared at him.

"Smokescreen?" He shifted uneasily. The gambler disliked mention of Prowl's attempt to plot out a relationship, even ten years after everything had come out into the open. And it did sound obsessive if one didn't take into account the fact that he _couldn't want_ the vast majority of mechs around him. However, not many people understood the constraints his battle computer put on him. "I did not intend - "

"Prowl?"

He winced in preparation for he didn't even know what.

"Do you have, uh, well," blue optics glanced off to the side, intently studying a bush. "You have any toys at all? Or is this, uh, your first time..?"

Prowl snorted. "Wheeljack **is** my friend."

"Oh thank Primus," Smokescreen said in a rush. "All I could think was that this was your first valve overload, and that you'd be disappointed and never want to do this again if I screw up." But Prowl was friends with the uncrowned king of buzzy inventions. Even if things went terribly wrong, there would always be the option of fragging with toys.

The tactician gave him a dryly amused look. "I sincerely doubt that you will 'screw this up,' but no, I have overloaded before. It - penetration will be the new part." He smiled, wonder and a hint of shyness peeking through. "You have already made spike interfacing an amazing experience."

That got him another long stare.

Before he could wonder what he'd said this time, Smokescreen hooked his fingers into his radiator grill and hauled him upright for a kiss. Prowl gasped for cool air when it broke, and a hand on his bumper pushed him down on his back again. It kept him there as Smokescreen's other hand urged his thighs further apart. "Well then. If **that's** the standard I've got to meet, I think I better get started." The gambler grinned at him before ducking down to disappear behind the bulk of his chest. "Lemme show you how a seal's **supposed** to removed."

From this angle, all he could see was the number '38' painted on suspiciously perky doors. Prowl craned his head trying to glimpse what Smokescreen was up to, excitement and apprehension filling him in equal amounts. What did he mean by that? Popping seals was a simple procedure of -

A puff of hot air was his only warning.

"Gnnrk!"

Heat, moisture, and lips moved against his valve. A long lick ran around the rim, waking charge to sizzle across his whole sensor network. Shocked, Prowl bucked before he thought, but that lithe tongue moved with him. It lapped at the seal, paying meticulous attention to the nodes under its surface, but every lick lit bright flames up inside him. He swore the inside of his valve was scorching, burning up, _on fire_ with pleasure. Prowl made another undignified sound, mouth opening and closing. He just - he hadn't expected -

The hand on his bumper left to join its twin in holding his hips still, but he still jerked violently. That tongue activated every sensor node he had and then some. A hard ridge - the tip of Smokescreen's nose, he realized distantly - scraped gently over the top of his valve rim as Smokescreen licked. This felt nothing like the burring vibration of a toy. It was hot and alive, and he wasn't in control of it. This was Smokescreen down between his legs making wet noises that had his fuel pump _hammering_. His valve began cinching in on itself, slicking up all over again.

Smokescreen pressed his tongue in hard, lapping sloppily until Prowl was grinding against his mouth in short, urgent thrusts. Then he backed off, switching to broad, flat swipes of his tongue. Heat and friction worked the seal edges, melting and stretching the glue.

Prowl moaned, hands squeezing the tips of a yellow chevron since there wasn't much else to grab with how his thighs were clamped around Smokescreen's helm. A moment later, his hands flew up to cover his face. Sealant slid agonizingly slow off sensor nodes that registered nothing but hot, sweet pressure. He stuffed the side of one hand into his mouth to stifle a yell as Smokescreen relented long enough to kiss the charged, sparking sensors, granting them a moment's hard pressure to slide through the cloud of _not-quite-enough_ and _please-yes-more_.

It built up and up in a glittering bubble of energy straining at the limits of endurance, and he wanted, he wanted, he needed to tip over the edge, to break. He couldn't stand it, it was too much. Primus, _please!_

Teeth caught the loose edge of the seal and peeled it off the melted glue in one long, painless pull, and Prowl curled up off the ground, hunching over Smokescreen's head as he came in a soft, gasping burst.

The thighs shaking around the gambler's head gave him away even if the dribble of freed lubricant didn't. Smokescreen pushed away to pick the seal off his lower lip, then dove back down to bury his tongue in the quivering opening. Prowl went rigid, hips tense enough to shudder in place as a quiet whimper spilled from his vocalizer.

Less than a minute later, his sirens went off in a blaze of emergency lights and deafening sound.

The local wildlife decided this neck of the woods was too crazy tonight. Even the squirrels got the slag out of there.

Smokescreen helped him sit up once everything finished resetting. "And that's a proper unsealing."

Prowl swayed, not sure if he was dizzy or just unable to focus through the ringing in his audios. Either way, it gave him a valid excuse to hold onto Smokescreen.

Who put an arm around him without even thinking about it. Cuddling through the afterglow it was.

"I hate to make you drive after this, but we've still got to get home," the gambler said apologetically after a while. "I've got first shift."

Tomorrow's schedule scrolled up on Prowl's HUD, and he sighed. Duty called. "I am fine to drive. I was merely - surprised. I was not prepared for the strength of it." Toys vibrating on his external nodes through an intact seal could not compare to that. His legs often wobbled after a decent overload, but he hadn't collapsed senseless since the first time. Which did, in a way, make sense of his reaction.

Smokescreen hugged him closer, savoring the dying tingle of dispersed charge against his armor. "I did good, huh?"

Prowl glanced at him and away, the quirk at the corner of his lips betraying a smile. "Indeed." Blowing out another regretful sigh, the tactician began levering himself to his feet. Joints creaked, and dirt pattered to the ground. They'd have to visit the washracks when they got back to the _Ark_.

"Extra suds," Smokescreen said, apparently at random, and Prowl shot him a confused look.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Heh. Nothing."

But yes. They did use extra suds. Red Alert spent the rest of the week dodging Datsuns because he sent out a PDA Alert on them, but that was price lovers paid for getting frisky in public.

That was normal life.

* * *

**[* * * * *]**

* * *

**_[A/N:_**_Thanks for DisplaceNoble again for the patience to commission this and then wait for it to run its course to get around to this point. The missing words in the prompt and warning are "virginity" and "seal-popping." I hope this is to your liking._

_On the one hand, this is probably the most realistic relationship fic I've ever written. On the other hand, I have never hated writing a fic so much as I have hated writing this one. This thing consumed me. So I would really like to hear what people have to say about it, because Primus knows I need to hear whether or not this thing was worth the effort I put into it._

_Until the curtain rises next time, m'dears.__**]**_


End file.
